Civil Servants Active In Promoting Claims For Increased Salaries

Wanganui Chronicle, 30 November 1948, Page 6

Civil Servants Active In Promoting Claims For Increased Salaries

WELLINGTON, Last Night (PA).— Public servants throughout -New Zealand were extremely active totlay in assuring the National Executive of their support for the policy of insisting on a satisfactory Government settlement of the long outstanding wage claims and refusing to follow the red herring of referring these claims to an ill-conceived: and unacceptable tribunal. This was stated byMr. J. Turnbull, general secretary of the Public Service Association.

“It is quite apparent that such faith as a member may have had in the ultimate intentions of the Government has been rudely shattered by a study of the provisions of the Tribunal Bill,” said Mr. Turnbull. “A very largely-attended meeting in the Housing Department at Wellington was outspokenly critical of the Government’s attitude, and was most emphatic that, irrespective of the nature of any tribunal which might be set up, public servants were entitled to an immediate settlement of their salary claims At lunch time, over 60 employees of the Government film studios were addressed by the president and genera] secretary, and registered their “condemnation of the Government’s betrayal of its employees in failing to implement the findings of the Margins and Anomalies Committee and totally inadequate and unsatisfactorys Government Services Tribunal Bill.

‘At Auckland, a special meeting of the section committee was called to consider the holding of a mass protest meeting of State employees, and affirmed that the attitude of the National Executive was the attitude of the association as a whole. Mass meetings similar to that, proposed for Auckland are to be held in Dunedin, and also in Wellington where the president and other officials will give members at the Majestic Theatre on Wednesday afternoon an account of developments up to that time.”