Wage Margins

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30847, 4 September 1965, Page 14

Wage Margins

The pending claim by the Federation of Labour for higher wages for skilled workers will be quite different from the claims for general wage orders argued before the Arbitration Court in recent years. The Electrical Workers’ Union recently based a successful claim on the issue of margins for skill, being granted increases of up to s|d an hour; and in a subsequent conciliation hearing, power board electricians were granted increases up to 6d an hour. In announcing the Court’s decision on the electrical workers’ claim, Judge A. P. Blair said he was restricted because any increases granted on that claim had an inevitable effect on other trades. A proper principle for margins could not be established until other unions likely to be affected had made submissions, he said. Unskilled unions will not be enthusiastic about margins for skill; but the federation can now assert, with some justification, that the judgment on the electrical workers’ case leaves it no option but to go to the Court.

Fortunately the outcome of the federation’s claim is likely to be much less inflationary than the 6 per cent general wage increase granted last year. Any increase in margins granted by the Court will apply only to a small proportion of award wages. Furthermore, most skilled workers are already being paid wages above the award, and—since the intensification of the credit squeeze—it is by no means certain that actual wages would rise in sympathy with award wages. Should their actual wages not rise in the meantime, skilled workers would have the extra security of higher minimum wages. If the federation’s case follows the precedent set by the electrical workers’, the desirable principle of extra rewards for skill should be re-established. These are necessary both to give apprentices and unskilled workers an incentive and to compel employers to use skilled labour efficiently.