POST AND TELEGRAPH.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 18030, 27 May 1930, Page 11

POST AND TELEGRAPH.

CASUAL WORKERS. OBJECTION TO CIRCULAR. WELLINGTON, Monday. The effect of the recent instructions concerning casual employees of the Post and Telegraph Department was mentioned to-day by Mr H. H. Brown, organiser of the Post and Telegraph Employees’ Association. The official circular received by district telegraph engineers states that if the men cease work through illness or any other cause they are to be discharged. “ A man has just applied for a fortnight’s leave to go under an opera.tion in hospital in the Auckland district,” said Mr Brown, “ and he has been discharged and given to understand that he will not be re-engaged, although he has has .six years’ service. Most ol the: men affected by the circular employed on the line'staff. Their duties entail working in all kinds of weather in the repair and maintenance of the telegraph and telephone services. They are naturally very often subject to severe colds, influenza, lumbago, and complaints of that kind, and necessarily have to remain off duty sick. “ Under the circular issued, these men will now have their services dispensed with, and even after they have recovered, if the strict letter of the instruction be carried out, they cannot toe re-engaged. Instances have previously occurred where a temporary man, as the result of working in the wet, has been laid aside by sickness of a serious nature for a considerable period. There was the case of a man who was in hospital for six months, and when he came out he was refused employment by the department. “ l’he workmen who are referred to in the circular are temporary employees of the department,” continued Mr Brown, “ many of whom have up to five and six years’ service to their credit. They are in an unfortunate position, since they are denied the right to make their representations in regard'to conditions of employment to the Government or the department through the organisation to which they belong. It follows that the only method they can employ to give publicity to a matter of this kind is to refer to members of Parliament, as has already been done in one case. “ These men, many of whom are married wih families dependent on them, are required to do work which is more or less of a skilled nature/but they are only paid at the rate of Is 9|d an hour, or £3 19s 9d for a full week’s work of 44. hours. “ The treatment meted out to -its temporary employees by the Government when they are absent from work through illness is entirely different from that accorded by private employers, especially where sickness is due to conditions of employment,” concluded Mr Brown.