RAILWAY SERVANTS INQUIRY.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16036, 29 January 1920, Page 8

RAILWAY SERVANTS INQUIRY.

EVIDENCE BY ASSISTANT MAN-

AGER. « (Per United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, January 28. At to-day’s sitting of the New Zealand Railway Servants’ Inquiry Board, Mr J. Mac Donald, Assistant General Manager of Railways, replying to the A.S.R.S. case, said he was glad to acknowledge the fairness and courtesy of that Society. The Department recognised that the Society was actuated by fair and honourable motives. The Society’s claims were not what the officers of the Department regarded as reasonable. The capital involved in the railways was roughly .£40,000,000, and the interest on the National Debt was about £4 2s per cent. The Railway Department was a trustee to the public, and must carry on with the object of obtaining a return on the capital invested in railways, and to ensure that the public would bo called upon at most to meet a minimum charge to make up any deficiency. All stores had advanced in prices phenomenally since 1913, and were still rising, and coal alone cost .£135,000 more in 1919 than in 1914. Other essential stores hacl risen up to as much as 400 per cent, above pre-war prices. The gravity of the situation was accentuated by the demands of the A.S.R.S., which would entail an extra expense of £1,000,000. The Department agreed to fair rates of pay, and had already gone a long way in that direction. Those rates compared more than favourably with the rates in adjacent States. Mr Mac Donald referred to the rises and bonuses' given by the Department to meet the cost of living, and maintained that the occasion did not justify any further applications. He submitted the present rates complied with the condition of a fair and reasonable wage claimed by the Society. This was a basic wage of 12s and a bonus of Is per day. Since then the cost of living, according to the index figures, had only advanced 3 per cent. The basic wage claimed for unskilled labour. Is 9Jd pier hour, represented an increase of 11 per cent, on the rates made previously. He pointed out that the hours of work—44 p>er week and overtime—claimed by the Society would materially raise the pay of the men in ,the traffic branch. Referring to the assertion that an unusually large number of men were leaving the service, Mr Mac Donald said the experience of the Department was that of other employers, that men since the war were seriously unsettled, and were restlessly changing occupations.