Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked whether the Postmaster-General has given an undertaking that women clerks would not be called upon to perform work of a higher character than that which the scale of pay recommended by the Select Committee of 1906–7 was intended to remunerate; whether ten first-class duties are now being handed over to women clerks of the second class, thus devolving important and responsible work on women clerks at a lower rate of pay than has hitherto been allotted for the work; and whether, in view of the fact that the Select Committee has now been appointed and will shortly commence its sittings, he will postpone the further development of the scheme of economy connected with the introduction of female assistant clerks until the Committee has reported?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELYes, Sir; I made the statement, which the hon. Member quotes. It refers to women clerks as a whole, in contrast with female assistant clerks. The readjustment of duties between the first and second classes of women clerks in the Money Order Department has nothing whatever to do with the introduction of female assistant clerks, and is an instance of a kind of reallocation of duties to a higher or to a lower class, which is taking place constantly in the Post Office. There has been, as a matter of fact, a net increase of one in the number of first-class clerks in the Money Order Department. I am not prepared to defer the readjustment.
Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTIs it, then, the case that at the lower end of the scale the duties of these women clerks are taken away, and that the simpler duties devolve upon less highly-paid clerks, while at the upper end the duties of the highly-paid clerks devolve upon these women clerks?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELThere is no question of devolving the duties of the higher-paid clerks upon the first-class women clerks. The new duties given to this class are the ordinary duties of first-class women clerks, and the duties which have been taken away from them are duties which ought never to have been given to them, and properly belong to the second class.
§ Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCKMay I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman considers wages averaging from 18s. to 34s. a week, without any chance of promotion, adequate remuneration for clerk's work in the Post Office?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELI should like to have notice of that question.
§ Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCKasked the Postmaster-General, whether, notwithstanding his repeated statements in the House that he did not intend to make any general addition to the new grade of female assistant clerks, some fifty or sixty appointments have recently been made to that grade in the London telephone service; and whether he will now give an undertaking that no further appointments shall be made to this lower grade pending the Report of the new Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELPending the Report of the Select Committee, I do not 234 intend to make any general addition to the staff of female assistant clerks for the performance of work done heretofore by women clerks, and I am not doing so in the London telephone service. I have graded as female assistant clerks in that office a number of women transferred from the National Telephone Company who did duties which are not the duties of women clerks and whose status with the company was similar to that of the new class, but on a lower scale of remuneration, and I am adding a number of female assistant clerks for similar duties. The pressure in the London telephone service at the present time is so great that it has been impossible to confine the classes strictly to their own work. Therefore some women clerks have of necessity, to meet the emergency, been employed upon the duties which the female assistant clerks are taking up, but those duties have normally been done in the past, not by women clerks but by boy clerks and girl clerks.