Wage-rise onus on employers?

Press, 29 March 1979, Page 4

Wage-rise onus on employers?

PA Wellington! Differing views about who should be responsible for containing excessive wage rises emerged from the Employers' Federation annual council meeting yesterday. .1 Federation leaders called on the Government for protection against “bullying and stand-over tatcics” by militant unions, and the Minister of Labour (Mr Bolger) declared that the federation should exercise control over “soft” wage settlements by individual employers. He said that the Swedish Employers’ Federation had the power to penalise members who breached wage guidelines, the Volvo car manufacturer being one firm that last year had paid a penalty of $44,000. “Perhaps this federation

needs to consider a similar approach,” Mr Bolger said. “Soft” wage agreements early in this year’s wage round by employers planning to recover costs on a market without price control would have a “severe and j disruptive effect” on wage relativities,” Mr Bolger said. Such settlements when fed into later negotiations could be ruinous. “I raise this matter not iust to create straw men to knock them down, but because your federation, through your executive director, too often when appealing for Government support to help resist unreasonably high wage claims, has | to inform me that, unfortunately, some employers have already agreed to pay the new rates, thereby undermining the whole ap-

proach of responsible wage settlements,” he said. Earlier, the Employers’ Federation president (Mr J. G. S. Reid) siad employers were relying on the promise made by the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) at Orewa in January “to improve the lot of the vulnerable employer.” “We cannot much longer sustain this loose situation where the employer remains unprotected,” Mr Reid said. The federation’s executive director (Mr J. W. Rowe) accused some union leaders of a deliberate attempt to exacerbate industrial relations and worsen inflation. He said it was “no doubt politically motivated.

“In some cases one suspects that union officials welcome wild cat strikes or even foment them, as just another way of causing trouble,” he said.