Letter to the Editors from the May 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard
A reader sends us a cutting from the Daily Herald (April 16th), in which it is stated that the Post Office has helped a Trade Union to obtain increases in wages totalling £4,000 a year for the employees of a firm engaged on Post Office contracts. This has been done under what is known as the “Fair Wages Clause,” which requires contractors engaged on Government contracts to pay the recognised Trade Union or other standard rates of pay. Our correspondents asks, “What about it?” We do not know whether we are expected to offer a bouquet to the Labour Government on this account. If so, we shall have to disappoint the expectation. The Labour Postmaster-General might very well turn his attention to his department. Civil servants, including the Post Office staff, have lost hundreds of thousands of pounds through the reductions in their cost-of-living bonus since the Labour Government came into office. Then there are the thousands of part-time workers in the Post Office, fully dependent on their Post Office pay for their living, many of whom are getting less than they would get as unemployed pay. Perhaps the firm of contractors concerned would like to give the Postmaster-General some points.
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