WAGE CLAIM Marathon Court Sitting To End This Afternoon

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28983, 26 August 1959, Page 14

WAGE CLAIM Marathon Court Sitting To End This Afternoon

INew 'Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 25.

The Court of Arbitration will tomorrow end its marathon sitting on the current application lor a general wage order. The hearing began on May 26.

Mr F. I’. Walsh (Federation of Labour) started to read his 61 pages of foolscap typewritten submissions this afternoon. When the Court rose till tomorrow, he had completed 27 pages. He told the Court that his submissions would be completed tomorrow afternoon.

This is the longest hearing of any wage claim in New Zealand industrial history. It is expected that several weeks will elapse before the Court announces its decision.

The claim, made by the Federation of Labour in the name of the Wellington, Taranaki, and Marlborough Clerical Workers’ Union, is for an increase of 13.7 per cent, in the first £2O of wages, and for the inclusion of the previous general wage order of an 18 per cent, increase on the first £l3 in the first £2O of wages.

Recent high taxation had no bearing on the current claim for a general increase in wages. Mr Walsh said. Why should a single man, who worked hard in the national interest, be grossly penalised if he smoked, drank beer, and drove a car, compared with someone else who probably never worked as hard, but who received State benefits because he had a large family? “It is no consolation to a single man who drinks beer, smokes, and drives a private car that his neighbour who is married with a large family has received an increase in the amount paid to him as family benefit.” Mr Walsh said. “There is no relation between the increased taxation and increased family benefits—cases where one balances the other being few and far between, and entirely accidental.” The employers, said Mr Walsh, had claimed that the Minister of Finance (Mr Nordmeyer) in his first Budget had instituted an “emergency tax.” It was presumed this emergency measure had been continued in the second Budget. “Irrelevant” Argument Mr Walsh said he wished to point out that the taxation imposed was not equitably distributed in terms of a general wage, and that, therefore, any employer argument that such taxes be regarded as irrelevant to an application for a general wage order should itself be regarded as irrelevant. Mr Walsh said that the application for a genera) wage order had been based purely on the rise in the cost of living and the present allocation of the share of the national income as between employer and employee. The employer was receiving the greater amount of the share of increased national income in relation to productivity, he added. The employee was now taking a lesser share Since the last general wage order the worker could buy a lot less, for say, a round figure of £lO. than he could at the time of the last wage order in 1956.

The employers, said Mr Walsh, had raised red herrings. One was a different basis for the consumers’ price index. • Some items had been replaced, and the whole range of items calculated had been increased in number. The employers had not objected before the last wage application to tobacco and beer being included in the index, but now they objected that the inclusion of such items would give a false picture as aligned to a wage claim. Beer and cigarettes were now taxed at excessive rates, said Mr Walsh. No wonder that employers employed this red herring. Earlier Objection

The employers had objected to the ruling high price of potatoes being used in the price index for a general wage claim before, said Mr Walsh. The workers had agreed to this, and had dropped the ruling (“temporary high”) prices from the index then quoted as part of the 1956 argument for a rise in pay rates.

More than this, the workers had gone out of their way to “exclude” such temporary rises in basic foodstuffs in their general claim, said Mr Walsh.

At that time beer and cigarettes were in the index. Today the employers wished to pass off the cost of beer, cigarettes, and petrol as emergency prices designed to raise revenue for the country's good. They claimed such increases should not be included in totals to be passed on in a wage rise. Employers claimed that the situation regarding beer and cigarettes was unusual, said Mr Walsh.

“What about potatoes in 1956?” he asked.

He said he wished to point out that beer and cigarettes in 1956

were in fact among the items on the price index which kept the cost of living down:—Until the 1958 Budget, prices of beer, tobacco, and petrol had a stabilising influence on the price index.

“In other words, increases in the cost of such things as housing (which has risen from an index number of 1000 in 1955 to 1220 in March, 1959) fuel and light (1000 to 1134), or meat and fish (1000 *o 1181) were, in effect, discounted up to that time by the inclusion of these stable items which are now criticised as not being legitimate factors in the cost of living. ...”

Purpose of Taxes Mr Walsh said he believed that additional taxes levied on cigarettes, tobacco, beer, and petrol were not so much in the nature of an “emergency tax” levied on the population as taxes levied so that the maximum amount of money could be raised in a hurry. The tax was not evenly distributed. It served no purpose in the case of cigarettes and beer other than either getting the money in a hurry or cutting down consumption of these items. It was not intended to cut down consumption—the idea was to raise money.

Employers had suggested that they did not want a general wage increase to “subsidise drinkers and smokers.” This was completely wrong. Taxes were not evenly distributed. Smokers and drinkers were not necessarily to be expected to subsidise,the rest of the community.

The only way out was to grant a wage order, if the Court decided to grant one. on the increases in cost of living, which, if it included houses and motor-cars, food and ancilliaries, also included things like beer and tobadco. Otherwise any application would not give a true picture of what any salary or wage earner spent his money on. said Mr Walsh.

Any picture of the standard of living in terms of the workers' share of the national productivity return without including housing costs, the price of fish, cigarettes, beer, the price of maintaining a car, “even potatoes” at the ruling rate, would not be a true picture. And it was upon the over-all price index in relation to its application to the average New Zealand worker that the claim was based. Mr Walsh said.