Decision for journalists

Press, 21 November 1978, Page 2

Decision for journalists

PA Wellington Effective and expiry dates for the New Zealand (except Northern) Journalists’ Union award have been set in a decision handed down yesterday by Mr W. R. Grills, the chairman of a committee Of inquiry into a dispute between the union and the Newspaper Publish* ers’ Association over the back-pay provisions of a new award. Mr Grills had been asked to set a date from which new rates of pay should take effect, and the date on which the new award should expire. He found that the pay provisions should be backdated to July 31, 1978, and the new award should expire on July 30, 1979, thus bringing the New Zealand Journalists’ Union award into line with that of its Northern counterpart.

The back-pay dispute led to a strike by journalists last month, during which most newspapers south of Auckland were unable to publish. Mr Grills said yesterday that, in his view, the dispute should have been concluded on October 12 and 13, and a conciliator’s recommendation —- that the effective date be July 31, 1978, and the expiry date June 30, 1979 — accepted. He said that both parties should have made a costbenefit analysis much earlier in the dispute; this would have indicated that neither party’s position was tenable. Representatives of the N.Z.J.U. and the N.P.A. agreed yesterday to meet again in a further committee of inquiry in March, 1979, to discuss journalists’ wage relativity before the start of the next round of conciliation.

This agreement was reached in light or Mr Grills’s comments in his earlier finding “that to set expiry and wages operative dates without analysing the factors is like treating symptoms without diagnosing the underlying cause of the disease.” After yesterday’s meeting, Mr Grills said he viewed the development as a constructive approach by both parties to resolving some of the long-standing issues affecting industrial relations in the industry.