STABILISATION OF WAGES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 151, 12 April 1950, Page 4

STABILISATION OF WAGES

EFFECT OF RECENT .AMENDMENTS FEDERATION OF LABOUR ISSUES STATEMENT (P.A.) WELLINGTON, April 11. The Federation of Labour considers that the Government’s recent amendments to the Economic Stabilisation Regulations will restrict workers in their efforts to obtain wage increases. The federation, in a statement to-day, said that the worker was to bear the brunt of rising costs and wa® to remain the only section bound by an otherwise abandoned stabilisation agreement. Obviously, it added, the worker would not submit to such rank injustice.

The statement said: “Having lifted stabilisation over great sections of our community, the Government has apparently realised how inflationary these act® must prove and how rapidly they will produce increased cests throughout the community. Now, as a stopper and without consulting either workers’ or employers’ organisations, the Government has amended «:ie stabilisation regulations to restrict the workers’ access to the Arbitration Court and thus delay the wor-k&.-e from obtaining increased wages to offset the very considerable increases in costs which the Government’s actions are already precipitating. “Under the previously existing stabilisation regulations the Court of Arbitration was empowered to* consider variations in earnings betwosn one group of workers and another, with a view to preserving and restoring equality of earnings.. In general, this was done by means of standard wage pronouncements by the Court specifying certain increased wage rates to be paid wherever necessary to permit the bringing of all wages u* to a common level. Such pronouncements were embodied in all existing awards and agreements as each came under review by the Court, in every case wage adjustments being made retrospective to the date of the pronouncement.

“Now that power granted to the Court has without prior consultation been eliminated. The Court can now only grant general orders which must be based not on the relative position of different classes of workers but on such factors as ‘the economic conditions affecting New Zealand’ and similar vague generalisations. “Further, any such general order obtained would apply only to minimum award rates and not to wages being paid above award rates,-which the new regulations now legalise, 'so that in effect a general order might conceivably benefit very few indeed of the workers covered by awards or agreements. Delays Forecast “Presumably the Court will now revert to its pre-war powers of making certain wage pronouncements raising or lowering the standard rates for skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled worker®, but as these powers require such increases to be added only to the actual wages being paid when the award or agreement has expired, this method would involve delays of up to two years before workers could obtain increases based on to-day’s rising costs.

“Further, the Court itself is the sole authority to decide when such pronouncement will be made,- whereas the previous stabilisation regulations authorised workers or employers to take the initiative in asking for such pronouncements. “Thus it will be seen that the new regulations, brought down secretly without consultation with either workers’ or employers organisations, provide in fact for the shackling of the Court 0f...,-Arbitration to restrict the power of the workers in obtaining justifiable increased wages to meet the rising cost of living. The worker rs to bear the brunt of rising costs and is to remain the only section bound by the otherwise abandoned stabilisation agreement. Obviously the worker will not submit to such rank injustice. The onus now rests on the Court to find some way of lessening the burden imposed by the Government’s new regulations, or the Government must restore the workers’ right to obtain justice through the legally appointed machinery of the Court.”