The economy

Press, 1 September 1980, Page 18

The economy

Sir, — Ignoring the historic reasons for the much smaller- number of West German unionscompared

with this country (e.g. wartime destruction and Hitler’s purges), L. J.. Stevens (August 29) continues to blame unions for our economic troubles. Because we are getting fewer and fewer employers (due to “rationalisation” and take-overs) it does not necessarily follow that fewer unions are needed as well. From the bitterly anti-union tone of most of his past letters I would imagine that L. J. Stevens’s idea of utopia would be no unions at all. — Yours, etc., M. T. MOORE. August 29, 1980. Sir, —L. J. Stevens (August 29) finds the points raised in my letter of August 14, which were unquestionably related to our economic situation, as yawn-pro-voking as I find his 294 unions, which are not. Muldbonists adopt such tactics, smoke-screening the inability of their administration to cure* ■ buY ' economic cancer. Your correspondent indicates his sympathy with Muldoon* ists who follow a far-Right, near fascist line who, if they had their way, would have the workforce goose-step-ping to the whip cracks of the superman whose genius has loaded us with, a $3400 debt per head of population and who has made mass unemployment a deliberate policy. I am not interested in . overseas ■ unions but am seriously concerned with the dictatorship; of international bankers and multi-national companies who are creating the same economic climate as prevailed just before World’ War II and whose New Zealand representative is, coincidentally, our Minister of Finance. — Yours, etc ARTHUR MAY. August 29, 1980.