Down to 1880, the overseers in the postal service, who are on their feet all day, had one day a week of relief from duty. In 1880 that allowance was reduced to half a day; and in 1893 it was discontinued altogether. In each case the change was made to apply only to the future entrants upon the office of overseer. In 1896 the new entrants upon the office still were complying under protest only with the requirement of the Department that they sign a paper stating that they were not entitled to any weekly “relief leave of absence.”[407]
There are four Monday Bank Holidays in the year; and for several years prior to 1892, the Telegraph Branch, as an act of grace, gave a Saturday holiday to those “news distributors” whose services could be spared on the Saturdays preceding Monday Bank Holidays. In 1892 it ceased to be possible to continue this act of grace without employing men on over-time, and therefore the practice was discontinued. In 1896 the news distributors complained before the Tweedmouth Committee that the withdrawal of “the days of grace was a grievance with which they would like the Committee to grapple.” The spokesman of the news distributors said: “After having enjoyed the privilege for [several] years it was withdrawn, an arbitrary course, almost, it is thought, without precedent. To grant a privilege, and then take it away, displayed a lamentable want of that courtesy that we think should be inseparable qualities of power and position.”[408]
Intervention by Members of Parliament
In June, 1904, Mr. Shackleton[409] intervened in the House of Commons on behalf of some men in the Liverpool Post Office, whose grievance was that an interval of 15 minutes, given as “an act of grace,” had been reduced to 10 minutes.[410]
In July, 1905, Mr. James O’Connor, M. P. for Wicklow, intervened in a similar matter on behalf of the men at the London West Central District Office.[411]
Before the Royal Commission on Civil Establishments, 1888, Sir Lyon Playfair was asked whether it would not be better to replace by boy clerks the “writers” employed in the past. Sir Lyon replied: “I think that would be better for the civil service and better for the boy clerks themselves. Of course, regard should be had to the writers who are employed now, and the change should be made by not taking on more, and not by dispensing with those that are now employed.” A moment before, Sir Lyon Playfair had been asked: “The writers are now a very large and very important body in the public service, are they not?” He had replied: “Yes, and they make you feel their largeness and importance by Parliamentary pressure.”[412] Sir Lyon Playfair had been Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service which had sat from 1875 to 1876; and he had been the author of the Playfair Reorganization of the civil service in 1876.
Before the Committee on Civil Services Expenditure, 1873, Mr. W. E. Baxter, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said: “…but I may say at once in regard to the matter of the travelling expenses of county court judges, that I think the whole thing has hitherto been in such an unsatisfactory state that it would be very difficult to defend the action of the Treasury in various matters connected with it.” Thereupon Mr. West, a Member of the Committee, queried: “Acting in accordance with that view last year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer endeavored to reform the system as to existing judges and as to future judges, did he not…? Is that reform being now pursued with regard to the existing judges?” The Financial Secretary to the Treasury replied: “Not in regard to existing judges. I have always been of opinion that it is very difficult to go back upon arrangements which have been made in the past, however injurious to the public service and uneconomical they may have been, and that it would be better for economists [persons desiring to effect economy] to direct their attention to preventing new arrangements of a similar character.”[413]
Unbusinesslike Spirit Further Illustrated