Job-improvement plans in party manifesto

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32975, 22 July 1972, Page 13

Job-improvement plans in party manifesto

A job-imporvement programme, which aims at making work less boring and monotonous, forms a large part of the first draft of the New Zealand Values Party’s manifesto, the party’s founder and leader, Mr A. Brunt, said on Thursday. Addressing students at the University of Canterbury Mr Brunt said that such a scheme would hold the answers to

industrial unrest in New Zealand.

The party had modelled its proposed scheme on a similar job-improvement programme introduced by the Norwegian Government. The scheme had proved “stunningly successful” in Norway, Mr Brunt said. At present, most employers had a lack of regard for the basic human needs on the job, said Mr Brunt. A jobimprovement scheme would change the nature of a job, give an employee a greater sense of involvement, and he in turn would show greater interest in his work. Mr Brunt described freezing works as the “disaster area” of New Zealand industrial relations. About half the total work-days lost by industrial disputes in New Zealand occurred in the freezing industry, he said. The main reason for this was the intense monotony of jobs in the works, which were uninteresting enough in themselves.

A job-improvement programme would encourage freezing workers to learn more than one skill so that they could shift positions and jobs on the chain every so otfen. In some overseas countries, experienced slaughtermen were already dong this, with much satisfaction and success.

His party, said Mr Brunt planned to introduce a taxincentive scheme to work in line with the job improvement programme. Departmentment of Labour officers would grade businesses for tax purpose, according to what extent they were involved in job improvement. Mr Brunt said his party expected to contest several seats in the General Election in November. He himself would stand for a Wellington seat.

The Values Party was so named because it stood for correct values. As a party it had a future, unlike National and Labour, which were “parties of the past.” “Our policy is not socialism, nor conservatism, but humanitarianism,” Mr Brunt said.

The Values Party also planned to control population, economic growth, and technological advance. A penalreform programme would be introduced, as well as ecology and beautifying plans. “We want to upgrade the position of people and downgrade the position of a system,” Mr Brunt said. “We are a quality-of-life party, but not in the narrow, antipollution sense.”