BRITISH POSTAL STAFF The enormous expansion of post office business since 1840 has naturally resulted in a corresponding increase in the number of the staff, and brought with it its full complement of the problems which arise in modern conditions in regard to the rela tions between the employer and the employee.
In the 17th and 18th centuries the number of employees was insignificant; in 1763, for example, the secretary's office—the G.H.Q. of the service, which to-day has a staff of nearly 900— employed 4 clerks. At the time of the introduction of penny postage the total staff numbered io,000, a number which of course soon increased with the growth of business. In 15 years it had more than doubled; by 1870 it had reached nearly 3o,000; and the later expansion of the field of post office activities by such new developments as the telegraph service, the parcel post and the telephone service caused an even more rapid development. By 1885 the staff numbered over 9o,000 ; twenty years later it had risen to 19o,000 ; and in 1914 the total was 227,000, the post office being by that time the largest employer of labour in the country. At the present time, in spite of the separation of the Irish Free State, the staff still numbers 229,000.
The principal questions which arise are of course those corn mon to all employers of labour on a large scale—the methods of appointment, the fixing of pay and conditions of employment, and the relations with the staff organizations. The majority of the post office staff consist of "established" persons, i.e., employees enjoying the usual civil service conditions of permanence of em ployment and pension on retirement. The clerical branches are mainly staffed by the classes common to all the departments of the civil service ; but employees in the "manipulative" grades in the post office have a certain proportion of clerical posts reserved for competition among themselves. Manipulative grades are gener ally recruited in one of two ways. Postmen are recruited to the extent of at least 50% from ex-service men ; with this exception the normal entry is through the class of boy messengers, who are given facilities for continuing their education, and at the age of 16 enter for a limited competition, their future career as sorter, telegraphist, postman, or engineering workman, depending on their success in the examination.
The post office staff includes over 50,00o women, employed in various grades—clerks, writing assistants, counter clerks, teleg raphists, telephonists, sorting assistants, typists, etc. The method of recruitment varies according to the work on which they are employed.
The rates of pay and conditions of service have undergone a long succession of modifications, as the result of enquiries which have been instituted periodically, through the medium of depart mental committees, committees of employers of labour, etc., and select committees of the House of Commons. At the present time the established machinery is to refer all claims which can not be settled by negotiation to the industrial court, which has been entrusted by the Government with the duty of dealing with the claims of state employees, and whose awards the Government undertakes to carry out, subject to the overriding authority of Parliament. The result of successive revisions, which have in turn benefited practically every class of the post office service, has been to place the present day employee in regard to pay, hours of duty and general conditions, in a situation which is con spicuously superior to that which prevailed a generation ago.