Dangers seen in equal pay

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32967, 13 July 1972, Page 14

Dangers seen in equal pay

Any legislation implementing the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry on Equal Pay would produce enormous practical difficulties, as well as wage inflation, without necessary attention to the relative equality of the work being done, says the president of the Employers’ Federation (Mr A. F. Crothall).

He was giving an address to a New Zealand Contractors’ Federation seminar in Christchurch yesterday. “Legislation along the lines suggested by the commission will provide women with equal pay because of their sex, not regardless of it,” he said. "Wage increases of between 90 and 110 per cent for a great many female workers over the planned fiveyear implementation period have been predicted. “After the massive wage escalation New Zealand has experienced since 1970, increases of this size can only lead to large price increases, especially in such female labour-intensive and consu-mer-sensitive industries as food processing, clothing and footwear manufacture and women’s hairdressing.”

Strain on industries

Mr Crothall said the wage increases would naturally

lead to demands for wage increases across industry. The Employers’ Federation had warned the Government of the consequences. Some industries and many companies, he said, would be subjected to such severe strains as to seriously test their economic viability. The international competitiveness of those that survived would be severely threatened. The federation did not opCose the concept of equal pay ut believed that job evaluation and classification must be completed before equal pay could be introduced. This could not be done satisfactorily before April, 1973, when the first step was suggested in the commission’s report. One-year postponement

The federation had asked the Government, in preparing the draft legislation, to postpone the introduction of the first step for one year. Mr Crothall said it was heartening that the federation and the Federation of Labour had been able to agree on so much on criteria for wage fixing and industrial relations. The fact that there had been no agreement on determining wages, nor on provisions for strikes and lockouts, did not mean that these had been lost sight of.

Any system of industrial relations, the federation believed. must contribute to better relations between management and workers, with recognition that increases in income without a boost in production was a potent source of inflation.

The productivity concept must be to the forefront in industrial relations, and there must be some way of regulating and restraining inflationary pressures.