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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University College, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 21, No. 3. April 1, 1958

Current Comment

Current Comment

Conferences

So the next Seato Conference is to be in Wellington. Why not have the summit conference here as well. Mt. Victoria would perhaps be a suitable summit.

Equal Pay

The Government favours equal pay for equal work and apparently intends to give a lead to employers by raising the salaries of women civil servants to that of men who do the same work. This is surely inflationary—no more work is to be done yet more money is to be paid for doing it. There will presumably thus be more money in circulation but no more goods to buy. But why raise the women's pay to that of the men? Equal pay for equal work could, of course, be achieved by lowering the men's pay to that of the women. This, of course, would bring howls of protest from the men (and those wives who do not go out to work). The only fair thing is to average out the pay of men and women employees and thereby not increase the total amount paid out by the employers. For example, say that for doing a certain job three men and two women are employed and that the men now get £900 a year each and the women £650 a year each. Thus the total paid is £4,000, which, divided equally among all five would give the men and women £800 a year each. Such a plan would also bring plenty of howls but if the public is really in favour of the equal pay for equal work principle and do not want its introduction to be followed by a round of price increases, then that is what they will have to put up with. Whatever happens the men will be worse off than before.

Girls Love Yanks

One hundred New Zealand girls have married Americans from "Operation Deepfreeze". No one can criticise the girls for that; every girl can marry whosoever she chooses. But it costs a lot of money to educate these girls and then before they have produced much in return for their education, they leave for another land. Should we demand compensation from the Americans?

Those New Moons

The two Russian sputniks set alight the imagination of the world although the second had some dogged opponents in S.P.C.A. circles. Then the U.S. Army was successful with Explorer I. Meanwhile the U.S. Navy, which had intended to be first, had failed more than once with its Vanguard. Now they have launched something described as a grapefruit, presumably the result of their earlier "anyone could have launched it" sour grapes.

The Empire

What are these "Empire" Games the papers are full of? The majority of the competitors in the games will come not from Britain's colonial empire but from a number of independent states. The term "Empire" or even "British Empire" will be truly offensive to the competitors from the newly independent states that will be represented. The correct title of the unity between these states is, as India's Mrs. Menon, who recently visited New Zealand, pointed out, the Commonwealth, not even the British Commonwealth. Let us then talk of the Commonwealth Games and remember that this is the second half of the twentieth century and not the nineteenth.

More next time on The Summit

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