The Press THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1975. No place in N.Z. for imported strikes

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33987, 30 October 1975, Page 16

The Press THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1975. No place in N.Z. for imported strikes

British seamen in several New Zealand ports are defying their union and their employers to pursue a quite intolerable demand. As a result, waterfront employees in New Zealand are losing work when they should be enjoying full employment and this country will face a serious disruption of its lamb exports to Britain if the stoppage continues much longer. The British seamen desene no sympathy from anyone in New Zealand. They are demanding the same rates of pay on the Pacific trade to North America as those received by New Zealand seamen. If this principle were conceded. British seamen on senices where the local rates of pax are lower than they receive—between Singapore and Taiwan, for example—should be demanding that their wages there be suitably reduced; New’ Zealand seamen operating off the British coast should ask to receive the same rates while they are there as English seamen; the list of changes would be endless and absurd.

Pay rates for seamen depend on a variety of factors, but one of the most important must be the general living costs and level of wages in their country of origin, not the rates of pay in any country to which they happen, briefly, to be trading. Airline staff have been known to raise the same arguments for parity with highly paid American aircrew, but the answer for them, as for the seamen, must be that if they want to receive the higher incomes they must base themselves in the country which can afford to pay such wages or salaries—and accept the higher living costs involved.

The British seamen are damaging their own prospects of employment by disrupting trade between New Zealand and Britain at the start of the lamb export season. Their actions, in defiance of everyone except themselves, can only encourage New Zealand to look elsewhere for the means to transport its exports. The exporters of N.Z. meat stand to lose as much as $1.50 for each lamb carcase which is delayed by the strike so that it arrives in Britain too late for Christmas—perhaps too late to escape the E.E.C. levy which is expected to be imposed on January 1. The seamen involved must know that their action comes at a particularly difficult time for New Zealand. There is no place in this country for disruptions to trade imposed by a handful of foreigners who are attempting to import here the mischievous and unjustified industrial actions which have helped to reduce Britain to its sad economic plight