The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated to the Committee that it would be inexpedient to try to raise the hours of clerks from 6 hours to, say, 7 hours. He said: “I suspect that my one-seventh more time would be more than compensated by my having to pay them a great deal more than one-seventh more salary; and I think it would be very perilous to take up the floodgates in that way.”[363]
Before the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the Civil Establishments, 1888, Sir Reginald E. Welby, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, stated that he was in favor of extending the hours of the Upper and Lower Division clerks from 6 hours to 7. The Chairman queried: “But can it be done with existing clerks without a breach of faith?” Sir R. E. Welby replied: “With regard to Lower Division clerks, it is provided that in consideration of an extra payment, which is according to the regulation, a 6 hour office can be turned into a 7 hour office…. There is no provision of that kind for the Upper Division, and, of course, any change would have to be made a matter of consideration…. The arrangement made between the authorities of the Inland Revenue and the Treasury, in those departments of the Inland Revenue which have adopted the 7 hours system, has been that the clerks who were under no stipulation to do 7 hours’ work, should have an extra allowance until promotion. As soon as they are promoted to another class, we have assumed that we have the right to put our conditions upon the promotion, and, therefore, from that time they fall into the ordinary scale of salary without addition.” At this point Mr. H. H. Fowler, a Member of the Commission, queried: “I understand you to say there is no provision made for altering the period of service of an Upper Division clerk from 6 hours to 7 hours. I want to know where is the document by which the State binds itself over to accept 6 hours’ work …?” “Nowhere. The only thing is that when he enters the office he is told that the hours are from 10 to 4, or from 11 to 5.” Mr. Fowler continued: “I consider this is a question of vital importance, and I want to have it very distinctly from you: I want to know where is the contract between the State and any Upper Division clerk in any department, that he is only to work 6 hours a day?” “There is no such document that I know of, and no such understanding further than the statement upon his entering the office that the hours are such and such.” “But I want to ascertain whether there would be even an approach to a breach of faith (if such a term may be used) if the State says: ‘We insist upon our servants working for us 7 hours a day?’” “None in my mind, and I may add that it is generally known that the hours are so and so, but longer hours when required” [on exceptionally busy days].
To Sir T. H. Farrer, Permanent Secretary to the Board of Trade, 1867 to 1886, the Chairman of the Royal Commissoincommission said: “What is your view with reference to its being fair or necessary to increase the pay if seven hours’ work be asked from an Upper Division clerk. Do you think there is any contract to do only 6 hours’ work?” “No, there is no contract whatever; theoretically the rule is that civil servants are to do the business that is required of them. The practical difficulty remains that if you do it you may have a great uproar. You may cause discontent, and you may have, as I said before, pressure in the House of Commons; but theoretically, and as a matter of right, I can see no reason why every officer should not be obliged to give 7 hours for the existing pay.” “Have you not to some extent recognized it[364] by creating a different scale of pay in the Lower Division for 7 hours than for 6 hours?” “Yes, you have, and I am very sorry for it; when I say you have, I was a party to it,[365] but I am sorry that we did it.” “But you are of course of opinion that when you announce that the office hours are from 10 to 4, it means that these are the hours of public attendance, but that it does not in any way prevent the head of the office from asking the clerks to stop until the work is done?” “No; but the larger your class of Lower Division clerks, the more you will find that the hours become fixed hours, and if they are asked to attend beyond them [because of unusual pressure of work], they will ask for extra pay for attendance.”[366]
Clerks are Clerks
In 1881, Mr. Fawcett, Postmaster General, created for the provincial towns the class of “telegraph clerks,” who are recruited from the first class of telegraphists, and act as assistants to the assistant superintendents. Since the men in question were styled clerks, they immediately contended that their hours of work should be reduced from 8 hours a day to 39 hours a week, the hours of the clerks proper. The Department always has refused to recognize that claim. But Mr. Beaufort, Postmaster at Manchester, acting on a misreading of the rules, from 1884 to 1890 granted the telegraph clerks at Manchester the 39 hours a week. In 1892 the hours were raised to the correct number, namely 8 hours a day, with half an hour for a meal. In 1896, 9 telegraph clerks from Manchester sent a spokesman to the Tweedmouth Committee to state that they had become telegraph clerks in 1890, when the hours were 35 a week, and that they deemed it a “hardship” to be compelled to work 8 hours a day.[367]
In November, 1902, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, stated in the House of Commons: “The town postmen at Newton Abbot were formerly paid on too high a scale [in consequence of an error of judgment made by a departmental officer]. The wages were accordingly reduced some years ago, but the postmen then in the service were allowed to retain their old scale of payment so long as they should remain in the service, and the new scale was applied only to postmen who entered the service subsequently. This will account for there being temporarily two scales for postmen at Newton Abbott.”[368]
Standard of Efficiency should not be Raised