"PALTRY MEANNESS."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 272, 18 April 1914, Page 8

"PALTRY MEANNESS."

TEACHERS' Si; PIiRANNUATION •t DOCKED.

PROTEST MOM AUCKLAND.

By Telegraph—Press Association. Auckland, Last Night. One aspect of the position of superannuated teachers who endeavor to supplement their retiring allowance by casual work for other departments of the civil service was discussed by the teachers of Auckland this morning at a meeting of the district branch of the New Zealand Educational Institute. Mr. G. Lippiatt moved—"That the Institute take immediate action to prevent any deduction being made from the pension of any teacher when the teacher's [total income from bins public sources, including pension, is not above £200." Air. Lippiatt pointed to a case which had come under his notice, where a teacher who had retired at a salary of £l2O I was entitled only to the minimum penIsiori of £52 a year.- This obviously was not a living wage, and the teacher managed to get employment with one of the Government Departments at £1 10s a week. , This, calculated as £7B a year, made, together with the pension of £52 a year, a total of more than the annual salary of £l2O at which this teacher had retired. The Government had immediately docked his pension, so that the total income of the teacher should not exceed £l2O. It was right enough, Mr. Lippiatt said, to prevent a highly-pensioned officer from unduly augmenting his income, but it was questionable whether any salary less than £2OO was a decent living wage for a married man. The deduction to which he was taking exception was made only where the man was doing public work. A pensioned teacher might make any | income he could in a private way, as, for instance, in business. The pensions paid to teachers were really their own savings, their own donations to the suiperannuation fund, with accrued interest. If a man were doing some public work, he was surely giving the equivalent of the money he received for it, and to make deductions from his pension in such circumstances seemed particularly unfair.

Mr. T. U. Wells, in seconding the motion, explained further that in such an instance as the one referred to by Mr. Lippiatt, deductions were worked o\it month by month, so that if a man were able to earn £lO in any one month his : pension for that month would be entirely docked, because that was the rate Jof salary he had been receiving before he was superannuated. For paltry meanness such administration would be hard to exceed.

The motion was adopted almost unanimously, and will be forwarded as a remit ■ for consideration at the annual meeting of the N.Z.E.I. in July.