MARRIAGE BAN DEFIED

Southland Times, Issue 23000, 21 September 1936, Page 5

MARRIAGE BAN DEFIED

BANK CLERK DISMISSED. CAMPAIGN OF PROTEST. London, August 26. Bank clerks of Britain are hoping that better conditions of service may result from the campaign of protest against the dismissal of Mr W. E. Notman, a Glasgow bank clerk, by the Commercial Bank of Scotland, because he defied the bank’s £2OO-a-year marriage minimum. Mr Notman, on whose behalf members of Parliament are campaigning, worked for 11 years for the Commercial Bank of Scotland. He earned £lBO a year, just under £3 10/- a week. He fell in love. He was forbidden to marry until he earned £2OO a year. He married, but he has now been out of work for a year. . Opponents of the ban point out that more than 70 per cent of incomes in Britain are under £2OO a year, so that instead of there being more than 18,000,000 married people in Great Britain there would be fewer than 6,000,000 if a similar salary ban were generally imposed by employers. An official of the Bank Officers Guild said: “With the Scottish Bankers’ Association we are establishing machinery to enable us to negotiate with the banks for a proper agreed scale of salaries, which would enable a man to marry and budget ahead.” The “Big Five” and most of the London banks have scrapped whatever “marriage minimums” were .in force before the war. Clerks in most cases are, however, expected to inform their managers of intended marriage.