WELLINGTON NOTES.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16448, 3 June 1919, Page 3

WELLINGTON NOTES.

THE PUBLIC SERVICE. BEGRADIN* SCHEME. 8* TBLBOEAPH.—OWN COEEMPONDENI. WELLINGTON, June 2.\ The public service regrading, which is being carried out now for the first time, is almost completed. Under the terms of the Pubiice Service Act, 1912, regrading was to be earned, out within five years, but this was postponed because of the war. Details of the classification as applied to the different posts and different officers are not yet available, but the general principles are governed by the new scale of salaries gazetted recently. This applies to the clerical -division of the general service (under the Commissioner), the Railway Department and the Post and Telegraph Department. Formerly the Post and Telegraph Department was nominally under the commissioner, also and it has had the same scale, but the railways were not under Commissioner control and had a. different scale, i

A decision was come to recently by the Cabinet to make the scales uniform, so that officers under the different controls, but doing work of a similar value should be paid the same. The outstanding feature of the new salaries scale is that the annual increments provided are larger. Instead of increments of £ls or £lo,' by which in most cases a man rose from the minimum to the maximum in his class under the old classification the steps are mostly £2O, £25 "or ©von £SO. The Commissioner has stated that the improvemen in schedule is generally £45 to allow for the increase in the cost of living. That is to say that a man whose work is not worth more than under the old classification will still receive an increase roughly of. £4‘6; in some cases it is £4O and some £SO, according to the way in which tne man can be fitted into the scheme These principles apply also to the general division of the service, but there has been no similar schedule of salaries gazetted as the general division scale may be altered from year to year and are not fixed by statute. The post and telegraph classification is already completed. It is governed mainly by the principles and scales laid down for the whole service, but the barrier at £220 for employees in the general division has been removed and some of the men in that division have gone up with a bound to £3OO. It was realised that they were worth more under the old scale, but while the barrier remained they could not get the money, though in a few cases of special urgency, where 1 employees would otherwise have been lost to the service the difficulty was overcome by the expedient of transferring them to the clerical division.

The increases granted are not quite as great as they seem, as the war bonuses were.given-- from March 31 last. CANADIAN CHEESE.: - -. ;; Joseph NVithan and Co., to-day re« ceived the following cable from their correspondents at Montreal, under date May 19: “English Government not purchasing Canadian cheese output. - British retail price Is 6d per lb, .market here 154 sto 156 s per owt.’’ This news wilt be of great interest to dairy farmers in New Zealand in view of the fact that their contract with the Imperial Government to sell cheese expires on July 31,1920, and the price for first grade cheese is 10|d per lb, equal, to 100 s 4d per owt f.0.b.. New Zealand peris. The season’s Canadian output of cheese was sold to the Imperial Government at 23 cents, or lljd per lb, f.0.b., Montreal. I