Calls for strategy

Press, 26 July 1978, Page 3

Calls for strategy

The Dominion executive of Federated Farmers has been asked to prepare a contingency plan so that farmers could immediately counter actions that hit their earnings. The action might not necessarily be “anti-strike action,” it was said. The remit, in the names of the Bay of Plenty, Waikato, Auckland, Golden Bay and Marlborough provinces, was one of a series on industrial matters considered by the conference yesterday afternoon.

“I think we are being done the dirty,” said Mr S. J. Phillips, before the conference approved a resolution seeking an assurance from the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon), that money being paid to freezing workers from the public purse would not become a charge on producers from August 1, when the wage settlement with freezing workers “negotiated by Mr Muldoon” expired. The Government had made an agreement in which the cost had been shared between it, companies, and farmers, and now it seemed that it was all going to come back on farmers’ laps, he said.