§ MR. MAURICE HEALY (Cork)I beg to ask the Postmaster General 330 whether, Tinder the Regulations of the Post Office Department, post office employés transferred from one office to another are placed in the lowest class of the office to which they are transferred, irrespective of their classification in the office from which they come, and though the transfer may have been made for the convenience of the Department; whether, under this Rule, the person transferred, no matter what his length of service, is the junior for the purposes of promotion to the most recent appointment in the new office; whether this rule exists in any other branch of the Civil Service; and whether it is the case that it formerly existed in the Customs Department and was abolished with great advantage to the Service?
§ THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. A. MORLEY,) Nottingham, E.In the Post Office the Rule is as stated in the first two paragraphs of the hon. Member's question. A contrary Rule—a Rule under which an officer transferred from one office to another should enter his new office according to his years of service—while an advantage to himself, would be a disadvantage, and, as it appears to me, an unfairness, to all those over whose heads he passed. At the same time, in the comparatively few cases in which an officer is transferred, not at his own request and not on the score of misconduct, the Department does what it can, with a due regard to the interests of others, to protect him from injury. I am not aware what the rule is in other Departments of the State.