The Press SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 1976 Incomes tribunals

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34107, 20 March 1976, Page 14

The Press SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 1976 Incomes tribunals

The comparison of wage and salary rates of people employed in private industry and those employed m the Public Service is a notoriously difficult exercise. In accordance with the State Senices Remuneration and Conditions of Employment Act. wage and salary rates are related to the levels of pay of people doing comparable work outside the public sector. In an attempt to divorce the negotiation and arbitration process for fixing incomes within the State sendees from the fact-finding work for making comparisons with the private sector, a special pay research unit was set up within the Department of Statistics in 1972. Even so. obvious comparisons cannot always be made between work in the public and private sectors: even when similar jobs are examined, differences in the conditions of employment, m the security of employment, and in fringe benefits make sensible comparison difficult and contentious.

These considerations must be at the centre of anv proposal to establish one over-all. wage-fixing tribunal to deal with the claims of the Public Service and of trade unions. The Prime Minister has said that the Cabinet has been considering a combined tribunal and the chairman of the Combined State Senice Organisations (Mr Reddish) was quick to say that “ in its present form ” the proposal would be rejected out of hand. Mr Reddish was unduly hasty in condemning a tentative proposal, but the community may share his concern that such a tribunal might founder under its load of work once economic conditions permit a return to unrestrained collective bargaining. Nor is it immediately obvious that dispassionate consideration of the comparative rates being paid in the private and public sectors would be better achieved if one authority had resnonsihility for both. In practice, an undue amount of the tribunal's time might be taken up in examining disputes about relativities. Representatives of emplovees in the private sector would be unlikeh to miss the opportunities that the new tribunal would present for claims based on comparisons with the Public Service. Such comparisons are already made, and the leap-frogging effects of relativity arguments confound the principle behind the State Senices Remuneration Act.

Would a combined incomes tribunal help to eliminate the leap-frogging effect? Much might depend on the extent to which the tribunal explained the grounds for its decision in any particular instance. Perhaps the exchange of information between wage authorities for both sectors could be improved, while each still retained its autonomy, and its special tasks and expertise. While the wage restraints remain in force the future of wage-fixing tribunals remains a theoretical matter. But the Government has been right to initiate an early discussion about the form any tribunal or tribunals might eventually have.

The return to free bargaining will be a tricky business at best. The parties who will be directly involved must be satisfied well in advance that the system will be fair and effective. The wage freeze is providing a valuable and unusual opportunity for discussion, free from the usual pressures of an attempt to use a system of conciliation and arbitration at the same time as the system is being reconstructed. If a case can be made for a tribunal which would combine the functions of the wage authorities in the public and private sectors it should not be dismissed out of hand.