U.K. Pay Freeze May Go To U.N.

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31151, 30 August 1966, Page 17

U.K. Pay Freeze May Go To U.N.

(N.Z.P A Reuter—Copyright)

GLASGOW, August 29.

A powerful British trade union is considering taking the Government before the United Nations to answer for its pay freeze policy.

Mr Clive Jenkins, general secretary of the union—the 35,000-strong white collar Association of Supervisory Staffs, Executives and Technicians—told a protest meeting in Glasgow yesterday it was taking legal advice. He said there was every season to think that a section of Britain’s new Prices and Incomes Act—enforcing the economic standstill with threat of fines —was a breach of the Government’s obligations to the International Labour Office, a United Nations agency.

Mr Jenkins said that for the first time in the history of any industrialised society outside the Fascist states, Britain was in a situation where employers were protected legally when they broke agreements with their workers. This was a reference to the Government’s order that pre-viourly-negotiated pay rises are also banned in the nation-wide wage freeze which is part of the austerity plan aimed at curbing Britain’s economic difficulties and. restoring foreign confidence in sterling.