‘RULING RATES MUST GUIDE ARBITRATION’

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32349, 15 July 1970, Page 18

‘RULING RATES MUST GUIDE ARBITRATION’

The sections of the Industrial, Conciliation and Arbitration Act which totally prohibited strikes must be removed, and the Arbitration Court in fixing wages of disputing parties must be kept in touch with scales of wages operating in the market, said Mr W. Rosenberg, reader in economics at Canterbury University, in an address to the Christchurch branch of the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand last evening.

Mr Rosenberg said that bringing the law into wage bargaining by the I.C. and A. Act of 1894 had introduced legalism, and therefore conservativeness, into in- [ dustrial relations. “The Arbitration Court can only keep wages stable. Nobody can say what a ‘just wage’ is: wages are settled by the principle of fair relativity. “The Court stablises. wages by saying, in effect, that if a carpenter gets a rise of 30c an hour, the relative position of, say, a hotel worker, to the carpenter before the rise must be maintained when the hotel worker claims a rise.” He said that the general wage order kept wages stable [in relation to the cost of living. But when the Court of Arbitration gave the “nil order,” because it said that the cost of living had no pri-

ority in its terms of reference over the economic situation of the country, then the workers saw that their wages could be eroded by the cost of living without protection from the Court.

The workers, through direct bargaining, obtained ruling rates—“rates that were being paid in the market but were not included in awards,” Mr Rosenberg said. The Court gave no recogition of ruling rates, and therefore award rates were not the rates being paid in the market. Direct Bargaining ’■Therefore direct bargaining should be permittedThere is nothing new in it \ “If the Workers can reach agreement by direct bargaining which they cannot reach through the Court, then gains included in awards reached by direct bargaining must be recognised by the Court in deciding the fair relativity of wages. New Zealanders are inclined to panic. They are panicking about industrial unrest today, but there is nothing to panic about and nothing panic will put right," Mr Rosenberg said. .“There will always be tensions and friction in industrial relations and legislation will not cure them, just as legislation will not stop strikes.” Right to Strike He quoted the former Secretary of Labour (Mr N. S. Woods) as saying that workers must have the right to strike, as a last resort, against agreements; and quoted the Employers’ Associations latest submissions to the Government as stating that workers should be able to strike when negotiating an agreement but must not be allowed to strike after reaching agreement. “The old ‘master-servant’ relationship has gone; that is part of the growth of economic democracy in New Zealand and all over the world. The worker and the employer are no longer unequal partners.” For that reason he advocated a reduction of penalties against individual union officers, abolition of penalties against individual union members; the setting up of disputes committees and more co-operation between management and workers.

Mr Rosenberg said that deregistration of unions which wished to negotiate outside the I.C. and A. Act should continue, but the power for new unions to register in their place should be abolished. He advocated stronger unions, that could enforce agreements enacted, with better educated and better paid officials, and with purposes beyond the “narrow industrial aim” as laid down in the act, so that they could embrace education and social work.