CO129-577-8 Junior Clerical Service- petition for improvements in salaries and conditions of service 6-7-1939 - 19-12-1939 — Page 17

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receive increments he does not suffer by the change,

but when he reaches his maximum he does, and when he

retires he loses the one-sixth addition to

pensionable emoluments.

To make up for the former,

the maxima of the new Class I and Special Class would

have to be raised to $2,840 and $5,900 respectively, at

any rate for men already in the Service now; to make up for

the latter they would have to be raised to $3,033 and

$6,533. It would follow that the minimum of the Special

Class should be raised correspondingly.

The Governor asks that he should be left to

announce his solution of the problems raised by the

petitioners, and that the latter could then petition the

Secretary of State again if they were not satisfied.

It seems to me, however, that this is hardly the best

way of setting about the matter, since it means that the

Hong Kong Government must first commit itself ex parte

to the Secretary of State the onus of upsetting and then transfer/its decision in regard to any matter

on which the Junior Clerical Service can raise a

reasonable objection.

If there were some Association representing

that Service, I suppose this petiton would have come

from them, instead of from a number of individuals,

but I should have thought it was nevertheless possible

to ask the petitioners to nominate representatives to

discuss their complaints with the Government before

the latter came out with a cut-and-dried plan.

I should be inclined to suggest this course

of action in reply to (1), saying that it has occurred

to us that a number of objections, such as those set out

above, might reasonably be raised to the scheme proposed,

though it is appreciated that some of those objections

only apply to parts of that scheme which are only

provisional