111.1, PAY AND HOURS OF CIVIL SERVANTS.
WE publish elsewhere two letters on the subject which stands at the head of this article. We have often written about the pay of the Civil Service during the War and afterwards, and we have from time to time published much correspondence about it. It is a duty, but by no means a pleasure, to return to the question and to say something about the hours of work. Last week we sum- marized the Blue Book containing the evidence upon which the several Reports of the Select Committee on Estimates were based. The evidence was mostly derived from the examination of high officials and heads of Depart- ments. Let us say at once that we want to bring no charge against these officials of being under-worked or of not serving the country well. The debt which the country owes to an efficient and perfectly honest Civil Service cannot, of course, be expressed in terms of money. We have much to be thankful for in the work of our higher Civil Servants.
But when we come to the defence which some of these higher Civil Servants offered for the bonus granted accord- ing to the Index Figure of Living, for the existence of the Whitley Councils in the Civil Service, and for the low figure of the working hours we are, if we may put it so, sadly amused rather than convinced. Officially stated the regular hours for Civil Servants in London are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with three-quarters of an hour off for lun- cheon, and 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays—a weekly total of thirty-eight hours' attendance and thirty-four and a- quarter hours of actual work. As regards the pay, before the War there were 283,000 Civil Servants (including Ireland) costing £29,500,000—that is to say, the average cost of a Civil Servant in 1914 was £104 6s. When the evidence in the Blue Book was taken there were 325,000 Civil Servants (excluding Ireland) costing 167,000,000. That is to say, the average cost had become £206 3s. The Index Figure was then considerably less than double what it was in 1914, so that the Civil Servant was " officially " better off than he was before the War and actually better off than he seemed to be because everybody knows that thrifty housekeepers in middle-class households do not spend as much on necessaries as the Index Figure suggests. The Index Figure is based upon the " neces- sary " expenditure of a "working-class" household.
There are other advantages which distinguish the Civil Service favourably from non-Government employment-- permanent employment, pensions, and holidays varying from three weeks to two months.
We have never been able to understand why the Civil Service should be regarded as immune from the financial sufferings entailed by the War—immune at least to a degree which is known to hardly any other profession. Nor have we been able to understand why the principle of the Whitley Councils was considered appropriate to the Civil Service. It was introduced without any discussion in Parliament and there is in the Civil Service no possibility of such a conflict of interests as there is between industrial employers and workers. It is that conflict which Whitley- ism was designed to allay. As a matter of fact, the repre- sentatives of both "sides," so to call them, which sit on Whitley Councils in the Civil Service have identical interests. They are all servants of the State. They are invited to be judges in their own cause.
If the hours which are officially said to be worked by Civil Servants were actually worked the figure would be low enough, but it is commonly said by those who know a good deal about the Civil Service that in the absence of anything like time-sheets the clerks frequently arrive later than the time fixed. It is said also that they take more than the official time allowed for luncheon and that they make their preparations for going home before the time fixed for leaving. Is it true that the official figure of thirty-eight hours' " attendance " and thirty-four and a-quarter hours of actual work is in practice reduced to some hours less ? We can only express our agreement with the Council of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce that no industrial business could be run on such terms. Further, we agree that the practice of paying overtime to the Civil Service clerical staffs after thirty-four and three- quarters' hours' work is one which the country ought never to permit, even if the national finances were prosperous.
The whole country is still in a state of profound financial and industrial depression. An insufficient service paid for at high rates is a wholly unnecessary burden upon the nation. As the Council of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce points out, without any undue pressure or uncomfortable speeding-up or cutting down of pay a reduction of about 15,000,000 per annum could be achieved and there could be a reduction of staff to the amount of 20,000 persons. We hope that in future a clear distinction will be drawn between hours of " attendance " and hours of "work."
Official statements confuse the issue. They speak of hours of work when they mean hours of attendance—quite a different thing theoretically and, if rumour is true, a still more different thing in practice. The right thing is for Civil Service hours to approximate to ordinary com- mercial hours. Surely in these straitened times that is not too much for the taxpayer to demand, for it is the taxpayer who has to bear the burden! The need for economy is not only just as urgent as when we wrote upon this subject months ago, but more urgent. We now recognize that we have to pay the American debt, and it is probably no exaggeration to say that we shall have to pay another unexpected £20,000,000 before we safely emerge from the crisis in the Near East. An answer to our complaints is, of course, attempted. Our readers should study Mr. Watney's letter in our issue of this week. As regards pay we were, of course, dealing with the statements in the Blue Book, and we have said so. As regards the hours worked, Mr. Watney says nothing. His final remark that "if the Civil Service made such a good thing out of the War as you suggest it is rather surprising that there is so much agitation and so little appreciation of the benevolent intentions ascribed to the Government," is very far from illuminating. The agitation and the lack of appreciation are not at all sur- prising. They are indeed just what we should have expected. Whenever men are placed in a position of some privilege and feel that they can increase that privilege by pressure, they make complaining a habit. The appetite grows by what it feeds upon. Surely Mr. Watney should know that.
Previous page
