THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1981. Changing laws for unions

Press, 25 February 1981, Page 20

THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1981. Changing laws for unions

Once again the police have arrested union picketers. On this occassion, at Auckland Airport, arrests were made yesterday and complaints of trespass have been laid: After a numberof arrests, the Commissioner, of Police, Mr Walton, instructed local police to make no more, unless they were “absolutely necessary . He is reported to have said that further arrests might unduly affect negotiations, and police action was deferred in the hope that .the'“situation could be resolved- by discussion”. About the same .time the secretary of the Police . Association was giving an interview in which he talked about “a challenge to society in the operation of its laws”; and he was suggesting that the picketers had a desire to be arrested —presumably with a. view to raising the -dispute they have with Air New Zealand to the highest level of public attention and. to exact sympathy from other unions: If this was the motive of the picketers, they have been highly successful.

Industrial problems are serious enough when a dispute is restricted to a debate between the parties immediately engaged in negotiations. They are more unsettling, irritating, and obstructive when the effects of a stoppage disrupt a service to the public or stop the jobs of other workers. When the police have’ to be drawn into the argument the dispute is likely to be escalated out of all proportion to its real significance and the chances of settlement become more remote as side issues obscure the essential differences in negotiations. ;At this stage, tactics get in the way; In the ordinary way ' the Police Association should not be drawn into, commenting on industrial disputes; nor should the police be put in a position of appearing to take sides. Even worse, the police should not be in a position of having to decide when it is politic or impolitic to make arrests. This is clearly the position that was reached yesterday in Auckland. -

The commissioner decided to call off arrests, not because the police believed that the law was not being broken, but because further arrests might delay negotiations. This is a political question and, with hindsight, it would probably have been far better

if the police had never been summoned in the first place. They could have thereby avoided a political decision. This would have left the nasty problem of deciding whether, in an industrial dispute, the ordinary laws shall be suspended or overlooked. The Federation of Labour and the Auckland Trades Council, having objected to the arrests, should contrive a policy on the relationship between industrial actions or the events that can arise from them and the application of laws which most people expect to be applied evenly. While the police are expected to exercise good sense when enforcing the law and are not expected to trouble themselves or other people with trivia or the fine print of the law, the police should not be left to determine broad policy on how to handle the circumstances that arise in industrial disputes. The federation should declare itself clearly on the question: if it believes that the laws on trespass, or assault, or obstruction of non-unionists, or any other laws should be set aside in the interests of union activity, the federation should invite the Government, the public, and Parliament to consider changing the law accordingly. If the Government will not entertain such a change, the federation might find one member of Parliament to introcluce a bill and have its policy tested. Putting oneself firmly in the way of being arrested is a fairly common tactic among serious demonstrators, and commonly the police have no course open to them other than to make an arrest if the offence is blatant enough. In other words, the police are being used for political or industrial ends. If the Federation of Labour believes that this kind of action serves the purposes, of its members, it could well declare this as .a matter of, policy also. In fact,the federation is unlikely to come forward with any policy on the application of the law, other than that the law should be applied fairly and equally to all citizens. Jf this is the federation’s view, it would be wise to let the courts decide whether the law has been broken. Calmness and logic are seldom to the fore in the heat of an industrial dispute; but the tangle into which the airport dispute has got itself and other unionists in relation to the law takes some beating.