On This Day, 30 March 1917

Birmingham Mail

Friday 30 March 1917

EDUCATION COMMITTEE.

BIRMINGHAM TEACHERS AND THE WAR BONUS.

ANOTHER APPEAL TO THE CITY COUNCIL.

Sir George Kenrick, presiding to-day at a meeting of the Education Committee, commented upon the action of the Labour Committee of the City Council in recommending that the teachers paid by the Corporation should be excluded from the scheme for giving additional remuneration to non-manual employees. The view of the special sub-committee officers’ salaries was that it would not be just to exclude the teachers; and they recommended that the Council be asked to rescind the words of the Labour Committee’s report excluding the teachers from the advance suggested to be paid to the non-manual employees. Sir George emphasised that it was absolutely necessary that they should as a committee keep satisfactory terms with the teachers. The latter had not made unreasonable demands, and he believed that the committee had always met the teachers in a fair and reasonable spirit. The terms existing between them had been excellent, but he should be afraid of a change if the recommendations of the Labour Committee were actually put into force. Those recommendations meant the total exclusion of the teachers. The suggestion was that there was a sort of understanding that their case was going to be dealt with in some other place and presumably some other time. If he were a teacher, he should not be inclined to trust what was “only a rumour” and about which there was nothing official. Nothing but the extra actual remuneration would be satisfactory in a case of this kind. It was suggested by the Labour Committee that where a teacher was entitled to an advance such advance should be on a more liberal scale than usual, but how were they to discriminate? Then if a “temporary” maximum were given to those teachers who were paid maximum amount that would be equivalent to a bonus. Many persons felt that the time had come for a general revision of the salaries of teachers, irrespective of bonuses, and with that contention agreed. The recommendation was agreed to.