Freeze cuts pay $33 p.w. —Mr Rowling

Press, 3 December 1982, Page 2

Freeze cuts pay $33 p.w. —Mr Rowling

PA Wellington The 12-month wage and price freeze could leave the average one-income family up to $33 a week worse off in real purchasing power, said the Leader of the Opposition. Mr Rowling, yesterday. That would be the result if the gap between prices and real wages continued to grow at its present rate until the end of the freeze, Mr Rowling told the food processing unions' conference. He said he stood totally behind the Federation of Labour’s call for a general wage order before Christmas if possible, and if not, as soon as possible in the New Year. “It is an essential base for any longer-term wage-fixing arrangements. It is absolutely vital if we are to salvage jobs and production in the post-Christmas period." Mr Rowling said the freeze was one-sided, and opening a poverty gap for-thousands of working families that was “sucking spending power out of the economy." He referred to statistics shown up in the nominal wage index, saying they revealed the growing gap. The lack of spending power meant that orders and production would not be maintained after Christmas, he said.

More big lay-offs could be expected and it was now clear there would be far more than 100,000 officially unemployed by the peak seasonal- period early in 1983. Mr Rowling said that the next six months would be the

hardest faced by working people, and by the organisations representing working people, in the last 50 years. The New Zealand economy was now in a desperate position and all the signs were that in the New Year it would get a great deal worse. Mr Rowling warned union delegates of the difficultiesahead in the food processing industries, because of what he called the “utterly gutless” way the Government had gone into the Closer Economic Relations agreement. A weak Government had been so desperate to get an agreement, that it had “sold out the New Zealand foodprocessing industry, forcing it into a position where it has to phase into an open market situation, on a fast track timetable all of its own. “That might not have been so bad if there was some sign that the Government had at least some plan ready with finance and retraining to assist the industry through the early stages,” Mr Rowling said. “There was no sign; just a blind, helpless belief that the so-called free market operating in a nil-growth economy would somehow sort out the situation and an equally blind belief that the Australians were going to be nice and helpful about New Zealand inroads into their own markets.” Mr Rowling said the success of C.E.R. would depend heavily on a return to growth and confidence in the economy but there would not be a return to either growth or confidence while the Government persisted with the “economic lunacy” of its wage-price freeze.