CUTTING DOWN STAFFS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16569, 31 October 1921, Page 7

CUTTING DOWN STAFFS.

DISMISSALS IN P. AND T. SERVICE. Very extensive dismissals are gen eral in the Post and Telegraph service, principally among the younger employees, who are better able to find for themselves on an unfavourable labour market. Eleven girls have been dismissed from the telephone exchange, as well as several youths ; and there have also been dismissals of young women in the telegraph operating room. The letter carrying staffs are being cut down in Christchurch as well as in the largei country centres. Overtime is no longer paid for in the Post and Telegraph Department. but is being compensated for by time off Superannuation payments are being returned to all oP those who are leaving the Department with less thau thirty-five years’ service behind them. Although the dismissals are limited to the younger persons, it is recognised that many cases of hardship will occur, as some of the young men axe now too old to learn a trade, and their rervice in the Department is valueless, while their superannuation refunds are only sufficient to tide them over a brief spell of unemployment. All the men with forty years’ service have now left the Post and Telegraph office but it is stated that there is great dissatisfaction over the fact that retrenchment has not been so extern (lively practised in the Railway service, where many forty year men are being