The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1917. THE CIVIL SERVANTS' BONUS.

Southland Times, Issue 17805, 2 November 1917, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1917. THE CIVIL SERVANTS' BONUS.

On what principle the bonus to public servants earning not more than £315 can be justified we do not know, especially at a time when the Government, won the adore of financial pressure, declines to increase the allowance for soldiers’ children by 6d per day. This year, in addition ’to the bonus, married railway employees in receipt of not more than £220 per year are to receive an additional allowance of 1/per day. Last year the bonus to civil servants cost the country £386,000. The gum required this year can hardly be less, and the additional allowance to railway men entails a further expenditure of £175,000. On what principle of equity can this charge upon the public fuijds be justified at the present time? Sir Joseph Ward that departments will be required to provide for the bonus out of revenue, but that is surely begging the question. The excess revenue from the departments goes into *the Consolidated Fund. In so far as the payment of the bonus reduces the amount of excess revenue from any department it reduces the revenue of the Consolidated Fund; consequently the amount is really paid out of the Consolidated Fund. Some of the Departments do not earn revenue—the Education Depart- / raent, for instance. Directly or indirectly the bonus to civil servants gets back to the taxpayer, and the Government which proposed the bonus and the Parliament which approved it are responsible for this anomaly: that the wage-earner who receives £3 or £4 per week is taxed to pay a bonus to the civil servant who earns £5 or £6 per week. Civil servants have many advantages. They are in safe billets. Their salaries and increments are not dependent upon the profits of the enterprise in which they are engaged. To improve their positions. they do not need to “hustle” and make their business pay. They are assured of life-long employment with steady advancement, and at the end of their days they are provided for from a superannuation fund to maintain which the public are taxed to the tune of £90,000 a year. The position of civil servants in these times of stress and uncertainty is very comfortable, and if the Government provides a bonus for state employees in safe and not too arduous jobs, what is to be said of the position of th# wage-earner who makes ten or eleven or twelve shillings per day with broken time, and of the small salaried man whose employment is insecure and whose prospects of advancement are very slight? The bonus to civil servants is an injustice to the wage-earners of the dominion, few of whom can show an income of £3OO a year. The bonus merely proves that the organised public service has a very strong political pull, and we venture to say that if civil servants had no vote the bonus proposal would not have been accepted so supinely by the House. There is no desire to impose hardship upon members of the public service or to depreciate the value of their work for the State, but comparing their position with that of. the wageearners of the dominion, and having regard to the financial difficulties which made it impossible for Parliament to provide an Atra 6d per day for the children of soldiers on active service, we do not see that the payment of these bonuses can be reconciled with equity and justice. The claims of the soldier and of the soldier's dependents are a thousand times stronger than that of the civil servant in a safe, snug job, with a salary of £2OO or £3OO a year attached to it.