Employers ‘no longer act like robber barons’

Press, 26 August 1978, Page 19

Employers ‘no longer act like robber barons’

PA Wellington Employers no longer oehave like robber barons of old, said the executive director of the New Zealand Employers’ Federation, Mt J. W. Rowe. In an address to the New Zealand Institute of Pulbic Administration at Waikato University. He said that the class i 4gle of the early 1900 s was a concept just not appropriate, and a most unnecessary element in contemporary New Zealand society. “The class struggle is a convenient fiction fostered by ideologies hell-bent on fomenting discontent,” he said in an address entitled, “Rights and responsibilities in industrial nations.” He urged a tripartite approach, involving the Federation of Labour, the employers and the Government to resolve or discuss economy-wide or labour force-wide matters. These were: The size of the national cake from year to year, which was a vital input into pace-setting wage settlements. The achievement of a more highly trained and rewarded labour force, using joint training-ret-raining labour market policies. An effective system of dealing with the truly underpaid and under-re-warded workers without the resulting flow on effects which destroyed the relative gains of such workers. Establishment of workable disputes procedures based on the principle that a dispute should be resolved as close as possible to the emplovee or employees involved. Others matters that, the three should consider were: Those which needed a legal framework, such as industrial safety, recognition of union and employer orgainsations, and their legal responsibilities. Definition of procedures, including special appeal routes fot orderly collective bargaining. This would still include the ultimate right to strike or to lock out, and would include the option of arbitration should the parties desire it. Ground rules for information to be used in negotiation (disclosure of information and, as well, some generally agreed criteria which could be used in collective bargaining. The best means of improving the quality of information and research to be used by the central organisations and their affiliates. An examination of the present award-agreement wage fixing system.

And the best means of amalgamating or reorganising unions and workers. Mr Rowe called for establishment of more pervasive but flexible employee involvement in business. Part and parcel of this would be much better communications between plant managements and employees. He urged a legal system in the industrial relations area which did not provide either unions or employers with an escape from their proper responsibilities or which would perpetuate weaknesses in their organisations.

The law should protect the reasonable rights of workers, employers and the community where they could not be codified in agreements between unions and emolovers themselves. Equally, the law should recognise the inescapable existence of conflict in industrial relations. But the conflict should be dealt with in such a way to ensure it was identified and resolved, rather than buried or shelved. “Conflict and co-oper-ation can go hand in hand,” said Mr Rowe. He also said that he vyanted to see more unified and hence stronger centra! bodies of employers and unions but with charters that allowed for adequate involvement by organisation members in decision-making. Mr Rowe complained that the strike weapon had become a weapon of first rather than last resort. There was clear evidence that direct action could achieve rpore than legal process. Stronger, more militant or highly organised unions had been able to obtain excessive settlements since the lifting of the wage freeze in August last year, he said. “Clearly, one important objective of the union movement was to increase its share of the “national cake” over farmers, businesses and other less well organised or protected members of the community. “While one can understand the motivation, we must ask ourselves whether the actions of the more militant sections of the trade union movement, motivated as they are by their own self-interest, to gain supirior conditions of employment over their union colleagues, are laudable or socially acceptable any longer. “I seriously doubt it, the more so when the “national cake” is shrinking. “The tragedy is that with our deeply ingrained sense of comparative wage justice, which in New Zealand finds expression

through the wage relativity system, gains achieved by one section of the unionised work force are passed on to the vast bulk of the work force. “Thus any relative advantage gained in the short term is nullified but it leads to a higher and ever more inflationary process, as that is a fruitless search. “It is an undeniable economic fact that wages and prices are closely related,” said Mr Rowe. Mr Rowe claimed that the present wage-fixing system really left no-one better off. “There may be an illusion that major sections of the work force who obtain double digit settlements are better off. “In the end, however, our endemic relativity system dictates that such settlements will only reappear as a higher rate of inflation. “This is surely a self defeating process, unless of course our external competitiveness improves or we can raise productivity,” he said. He deplored the failure of successive governments to obtain a social consensus on the size of the “national cake” and how it should be carved up. Mr Rowe contended that the longer the law sought to enforce wage restraint., the more encouraged the unions were to resort, to industrial muscle to upset the impact of wage restraint. At first the process was legitimised, for instance, with the “exceptional circumstances” clause of the Wage Adjustment Regulations. Then the law was ignored by unions and some employers. “Industrial law, in many of its manifestations, is now openly flouted.” he said. “Nor does the law have the ability to enforce a code of industrial relations not agreed■ by both parties, especially the unions,” said Mr Rowe. Mr Rowe asked how often in the last two years the reasonable freezing industry law that, stock in the yards should be killed before a strike began had been ignored. “He also referred to” the continual efforts by unions to emasculate section 128 of The Industrial Relations Act, enabling an employer to suspend non striking workers w'here no further work was available because of a strike. He cited the recent Tasman case which threatened a $lOO million a year export industry.

He said it was little wonder that governments on behalf of the community had attempted to curb the unbridled power of the unions.