CHAPTER XV
The House of Commons, Under Pressure from the Civil Service Unions, Curtails the Executive’s Power to Promote Employees According to Merit
The civil service unions oppose promotion by merit, and demand promotion by seniority. Testimony presented before: Select Committee on Civil Services Expenditure, 1873; Select Committee on Post Office, 1876; Royal Commission to inquire into the Civil Establishments, 1888; from statement made in House of Commons, in 1887, by Mr. Raikes, Postmaster General; and before the so-called Tweedmouth Committee, 1897. Instances of intervention by Members of House of Commons on behalf of civil servants who have not been promoted, or are afraid they shall not be promoted.
In the matter of promotion, also, the civil servants’ unions compel the Members of Parliament to intervene, on behalf of individual employees, in the details of the administration of the several Departments of State. The organized civil service is not content that every man should have an equal chance of promotion, so far as his industry and capacity shall qualify him for advancement; it evinces a marked tendency to demand equal promotion in fact, that is, the elimination of the effects of the natural inequality among men. The House of Commons, in yielding in this matter to the pressure from the organized civil service, is tending to reduce the public service to a dull level of mediocrity, which action at one and the same time impairs the efficiency of the public service and makes the service of the State unattractive to able and ambitious men.
In this matter of promotion, the permanent heads of the Departments are hampered also by the unbusinesslike attitude toward the conduct of the public business that characterizes large sections of the newspaper press as well the great mass of the voters. That unbusinesslike frame of mind, in turn, is the outgrowth of that untrained sympathy which makes every one tend to sympathize with the individual, whenever the interest of the individual clashes with that of the State. To illustrate, in 1873, before the Select Committee on Civil Services Expenditure, Sir William H. Stephenson, Chairman of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, stated that in his Department promotion was mainly by seniority in the two lowest classes, to some extent by seniority in the third class, but beyond that entirely by merit. But he hastened to add: “Indeed, if I may judge by the complaints that I have heard out of doors, occasionally in the newspaper press, and elsewhere, the system of promotion by merit is supposed to be carried to rather an excessive extent in the Inland Revenue.”[273]
The Glasgow Postmaster’s “Mistake”
In 1876, before the Select Committee on Post Office, Mr. Hobson, Postmaster at Glasgow, stated that he could not promote his telegraph operators according to their dexterity, he was obliged to promote according to seniority. Mr. Gower, a member of the Select Committee queried: “Therefore, there is no encouragement whatever to superior dexterity?” Mr. Hobson replied: “I should not recommend a clerk for promotion … if I were satisfied that he was not doing all he could to improve himself … and was only an indifferent operator. I should mention that in submitting the report, and recommend him to be passed over.” Mr. Gower continued: “But suppose he took every sort of pains to improve himself, but did not improve?” The answer came: “I would then recommend him to go forward [i. e. for promotion].” Mr. Gower then asked: “Have you any power to exchange a clerk who is a slow operator for another quicker operator in a district where it would not signify?” The Postmaster at Glasgow replied: “None whatever.”[274] The reader will recall that there are numerous telegraph stations in Glasgow.
In April, 1877, the Postmaster General, Lord John Manners, replied to the Report of the Select Committee of 1876, in a letter to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. He concluded the letter with the statement: “In conclusion, I beg leave to say that it is, I think, hardly worth while to attempt to contradict the mistakes as to promotion into which the postmaster of Glasgow was accidentally betrayed in giving his evidence before the Committee of last Session, and to which no reference is made in their Report.”[275]
Before the same Committee, Mr. Edward Graves, Divisional Engineer, recommended that the head of the Post Office establish the rule, “that, other things being equal as to seniority and general business capacity, preference for promotion shall always be given to the telegraph clerk who has shown himself possessed of technical knowledge, and who is desirous of obtaining technical information.”[276]