Call to end ‘wage apartheid system’

Press, 9 May 1981, Page 2

Call to end ‘wage apartheid system’

PA Wellington New Zealand has a system of apartheid in wages which must be changed, the Federation of Labour’s annual conference was told yesterday. .Mr R.- Lowe (Southern Labourers’ Union) said that under the present system of percentage increases, lowerpaid workers were becoming worse off all the time. If workers on $3OO a week needed a $4l a week increase to maintain a decent living standard, so did the worker on $l2O a week, he said. He urged trade unions to discuss the issue and suggested that they might need to change traditional attitudes. Some of his members on more than $3OO a week were not going to be happy about taking a lower percentage, increase. But if trades unions believed in the principle of socialism — a fair deal for all 4- then these attitudes might have to change. Mr LoWe was speaking on a remit from the Waterside Workers’ Federation. It called on the conference “to reaffirm the policy of seeking to achieve a minimum wage concept and to develop this through the F.0.L.”. The conference had before it yesterday a research paper stating that the national executive was eager to promote discussion on a : new wages policy. The paper defined an adequate minimum living wage as the amount of tax-paid weekly income required to feed, clothe and house adequately a worker and to provide him or her with the. necessary personal services. The minimum living wage should be established on the basis of a single worker, provided that adequate compensation for family dependants was available through the taxation and benefit system. The paper was presented to the conference as a recommendation from the national executive. Affiliates have been asked to provide comment by July 15. If necessary, the national council will call a special F.O.L. conference on August 5.

The F.O.L. has also embarked on a programme of discussion and planning designed to produce an alternative economic policy for adoption at the annual conference next year. Delegates yesterday accepted a recommendation from the national executive that the conference endorse the further development of the economic policy. Points to be covered will be investment profits and control, the workings of the Government sector, the distribution income and wealth in New Zealand and basic factors influencing employment, inflation, and the balance of payments. In other business on the final, day of the conference, a call was made for subsidies to be reintroduced on staple food items, and for free milk and apples to be given to all school children. Three remits dealing with subsidies, proposed by the Wellington and Taranaki Caretakers and Cleaners’ Union and the Ice-cream Workers’ Union, were endorsed unanimously by the conference. Mr G.Hogarth, of Auckland, also suggested that milk and apples be brought back as free items in schools, a policy plank the Auckland Labour Party was considering. Mr Barry Brown (New Zealand Labourers’ Union) expressed concern that an $BO milion beet plant to produce ethanol was to be set up by the Colonial Sugar Refining Company in Canterbury.

While it would create 600 jobs it was to be a multinational company in charge of yet another energy project. A New Zealand company could have done the same work.

At his suggestion, the conference passed a resolution opposing the “monopolistic control encouraged by the National Government” with regard to this sugar beet concern, endorsed the Canterbury Trades Council campaign against the plant, and called on a New Zealand company to take up the project. The conference rejected a proposal to impose a black ban bn the site of the proposed second aluminium smelter. A remit from the Caretakers and Cleaners’ Union called on all affiliates to declare the development black. But the conference accepted a compromise position declaring its support for any action taken by the Otago Trades Council to encourage and implement opposition to the smelter.

The conference also criticised plans to import the South Korean Pony car.

Last month, ’after a State visit to South Korea, the Prime Minister announced that the car would be imported. The Wellington Trades Council president and convenor of the Hutt Valley motor assembly unions, (Mr P. Kelly) told the conference that plans were for the vehicle to be brought in fully assembled.