Metal trades award not yet settled

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32705, 7 September 1971, Page 18

Metal trades award not yet settled

(By our industrial reporter) The Minister of Labour (Mr Marshall) and the three principal officers of New Zealand’s largest trade union yesterday spent an hour discussing a dispute involving less than 2c an hour.

The 36,000-member Engineers’ Union opened negotiations on June 16 for a new metal trades award, and has met the employers on four further occasions without reaching a settlement. Yesterday’s talks with Mr Marshall were also inconclusive. Meanwhile, workers in four Auckland engineering workshops are on strike, and direct action is threatened in Dunedin. . The difference between the union’s latest claims and the employers latest offer is o.Bc an hour service allowance after 12 months with the same employer, and 1c an hour for tradesmen with trade certificate. Agreement has already been reached on a basic tradesman’s rate of $1.54.

Two separate relativity arguments are involved, and it appears to be the principle rather than the money which is concerning the workers and preventing a settlement. The metal trades workers have been offered a service allowance of 2.2 c an hour, but are holding out for 3c an hour because this was recently awarded to factory engineer members of the same union. Their argument is not very sound,.because the metal workers and factory engineers are about to go on the same basic hourly rate, whereas in the past there has been a slight margin—about Ic—in favour of the factory engineer. The other relativity argument concerns the relationship of the certificated metal trades fitter and the registered electrician. The fitter has been offered $1.59 an hour—the figure at which the factory engineers’ award was settled—but the union is holding out for $1.60 to maintain a very long-standing parity with the electrician.

In the one case, the union is seeking o.Bc an hour to gain relativity with one group of workers; in the other case it is rejecting relativity with the first group of workers and claiming 1c an hour to retain relativity with a second group of workers. The national president of the Engineers’ Union (Mr R. Jones, of Christchurch) said last evening that he hoped negotiations for the new award would soon be resumed. The executive of the Canterbury branch of the union called last night for the national union to re-open negotiations "bearing in mind the losses sustained by' our members during the delay ip settlement.”