BETTER PAY FOR AUSTRALIAN AIRMEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 144, 8 September 1927, Page 11

BETTER PAY FOR AUSTRALIAN AIRMEN

Evidence given before the Federal Royal Commission on Air Disasters by the Australian Flying Corps Asociation alleged that the personnel of the Australian Air Force was suffering owmg to the low rates of pay offered kn that branch of the service by the Defence Department.

The Australian Flying Corps Association is composed of more than 250 men of all ranks employed during the war in the A.A.F. and the R.A.F. The evidence was submitted to the commission by the president (Mr. G. Hartman) and the honorary secretary (Mr. H. S. Notley). The witnesses, in a combined statement, said the salary offered by the Defence Department in some branches of the Australian Air Force was less than the basic wage laid down by the arbitration courts as a living wage. In most groups of the A.A.F. there was little chance of men receiving rates corresponding with the award rates even after six years of service. These men received no pension, and the superannuation they were paid was really a refund from the compulsory deductions from their wages. On this compulsory saving the Government allowed only 3S per cent, interest, while the Government Savings Bank paid interest at 4 per cent. The men of the A.A.F. obtained no child endowment nor many other advantages open to men similarly employed in civil life. Yet the men of the A.A.F. had to work seven days a week and at all hours, which was a grievance, especially with the married men. BEST SKILL NOT AVAILABLE

The association felt that the A.A.F. was not being effectively served when the best mechanical skill was not made available to the pilots who had actually to fly the machines. Civil aviation concerns and industrial undertakings found difficulty in getting trained mechanics at even £7 weekly: yet the pay in the A.A.F. for mechanics was only £4 19s 9d for single men and £5 6s 9d for married men. The same discrepancy in pay as compared with civil life existed in other branches of the A.A.F. The result was that the best men did not offer for service in the A.A.F. This was shown in the case of the Randwick experimental station, where 72 civilians had to be employed for technical work, as suitable men did not enlist for this job. At Richmond airdrome the unskilled class of man ingroup five was paid £2 16s weekly, and had to find his own living on an allowance of 11s 6d a week. “It is known to the men Avho have to fly the machines of the Air Force,” continued the association’s statement, "that the men who look after them are not the best obtainable if conditions were better. That does not tend to strengthen the moral of our pilots, which should be of the highest.” The association also advocated better pay for the commissioned rank of the A.A.F.. with a proper pension, and an extension of the retiring age, and the provision of other employment in the Defence Department when flying officers had reached an age considered unsafe for pilots to have control of an airplane. .