Decision may hint at 3% wage order

Press, 15 October 1976, Page 4

Decision may hint at 3% wage order

PA Wellington A reliable source which can usually be expected to exercise an independent judgment believes that the Industrial Commission has, in effect, opened the gates to a 3 per cent cost-of-living adjustment.

This opinion is based on the commission’s decision vesterday to go beyond what the Government intended with its “exceptional circumstances” amendment to the Industrial Relations Act and to give three unions, including the drivers’, a 3 per cent increase in pay—and to accept as an “exceptional circumstance” the fact that one of the unions, the electricity supply workers’, did not have relativity with its members’ opposite" numbers in State employment.

The source saw the commission’s decision as a good industrial relations move. Although some members of the affected unions—the third is the electrical contracting workers’—will be unhappy about the size of the increase, the commission has removed much of the heat from the industrial scene.

In its ruling in the increased wages, in which dairy workers won a 3.5 per cent increase, the commission also showed its determination to observe the legislative requirements of a full 12-months term for awards and agreements. The commission has yet to publish its decision on another important claim, the 3 per cent demand of the 25.000-member engineers’ union.

The president of the Federation of Labour (Sir Thomas Skinner) has described the commission’s decision as “complete justification” of the F.OX. interpretation of exceptional circumstances. Some observers feel that the Government had supported the view held by employers—that virtually no wage rises would be allowed beyond the 7 per cent wage order. They believe that the commission’s action has stopped the industrial pot from coming to the boil.

Sir Thomas last night said he believed that nearly all unions would now be able to negotiate new agreements with their employers. In its decision, the commission said the dairy workers had sought an increase based on nsing productivity. It said employers saw the exceptional circumstances in a “narrow field,” but it was itself satisfied that the parties had sustained exceptional circumstances. Two disagreements yesterday marred a period that has seen progress in wage bargaining. At the Huntly coalfield miners staged a mass stop-work meeting in protest againes a Mines Department ruling that they claim has halved production and cut productivity bonuses, and in Wellington talks broke down between representatives of tugmasters and mates and their employers, the Harbours Association.

The association tried late last night to find an offer acceptable to the tug officers’ association, the Merchant Service Guild, but its offer

was rejected as too indefinite.

The failure of the talks will mean disruption from midnight to 8 a.m., beginning tonight, in nine ports—Lyttelton, Tauranga, Auckland, New Plymouth, Wellington, Nelson, Port Chalmers, Timaru, and Bluff. The tug officers are seeking a guaranteed break of eight hours in every 24. At present they are on call for 24 hours, and they claim that fatigue is becoming a serious problem.

The disruption will have a marked effect at Lyttelton, where moorings are usually changed before 7 a.m. in preparation for the arrival of waterside gangs at that hour. Some progress has been made in port industrial relations. however. Watersiders have accepted a new award giving them a 4 per cent wage rise in a new award that must now go before the Industrial Commission. The award also includes a number of increases in reimbursing payments agreed by the Port Employers’ Association. If approved, the award will run until the end of the present wage freeze, next May 14.

In Christchurch, the footwear repairers and bespoke workers have secured a three per cent wage offer, and will make a joint approach with their employers to the commission for ratification.

So will the Clothing Workers' Federation and the employers, who also agreed on a 3 per cent increase in Christchurch yesterday. Wage settlements have also been made for about 6000 workers in stores and warehouses in central and sou'hem New Zealand as a result of conciliation council talks in Wellington between the Storemen and Packers’ Union and their employers. The agreements for warehousemen, storemen and packers, and fruit and produce workers all include improvements in conditions and a new payment of $2 a week for qualified and designated first-aid attendants.

The increases would bring the storemen and packers’ rate to $80.16 a week. Talks for a new agreement for packaging and associated workers, about 500 of whom are employed in Canterbury, will resume in Wellington on October 20. They broke down on September 21, as did talks on the printing and related trades award — but no date has been fixed for the resumption of the latter talks.

The meat workers and the Freezing Companies Association resumed talks yesterday, and will continue to negotiate today over the workers’ claim of a 14 per cent pay rise and increases in allowances.

Prison officers plan to press immediately for an increase in salaries and an improvement in conditions, but the chairman of the prison

officers’ section of the Public Service Association (Mr P. Anstiss) has said that claims that the officers were on the brink of a strike were exaggerated. Pulp-and-paper industry unions and employers expect within a fortnight to take a case for a 3 per cent wage rise to the Industrial Commission for approval. Petrol-tanker drivers went back to work in Auckland yesterday and motorists began topping up their tanks, but a meeting of the petroleum company, Caltex, and the Storemen and Packers’ Union today may result in another stop-work If a meeting on Monday of workers from other oil companies achieves nothing, petrol supplies to all companies could be threatened. The dispute is over who should operate supply-valves.

The Northern Drivers’ Union is having injunctions prepared against oil companies to prevent them from ordering drivers to do other than their normal duties. The tanker Kotuku has left Marsden Point after being held up for eight days by a strike over lavatories. She will take much-needed diesel oil to Wellington and Dunedin.