NEW APPLICATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27346, 23 March 1950, Page 8

NEW APPLICATION

Increase In Public Service Salaries

Flans Of Association PA ” WELLINGTON, Mar. 22. A further application to the Government Service Tribunal for an increase in the salaries of public servants is proposed by the augmented National Executive Committee of the Public Seryice Association. “It is considered that the executive should at the earliest possible date lodge an application with the tribunal for a principal order for a general increase for all public servants,” says a statement issued by the committee after a meeting in Wellington. The statement said the grounds for the application will be:—(1) The increased cost of living; (2) maldistribution of the national income; (3) the award rates of wages; (4) the rates of payment generally prevailing; and (5) the efficiency of the public service. “This claim should seek to have the automatic maximum of the clerical division increased by £IOO yearly, with commensurate increases to other sections, rateably increased where necessary to provide adequate margins for skill and responsibility,” says the statement. “ The executive is also requested to proceed as quickly as possible with claims on behalf of groups such as scientists, meat inspectors, mine managers, engineers and architects.” The statement said the augmented committee, after hearing reports in regard to the salaries case recently submitted to the Government Service Tribunal and studying the tribunal’s decision and the minority dissenting opinion, “ is more than ever convinced that public servants are inadequately paid in all grades. In rejecting the association’s claims, the tribunal has failed to prescribe wage rates which are in proper relationship with the rates of other workers and the incomes of other sections of the community.” The committee felt very strongly, said the statement, that the tribunal had applied to the service a rigid conception of stabilisation that had long been abandoned so far as other sections of the community were concerned.