‘N.Z. cursed by power-drunk union leaders’

Press, 30 May 1983, Page 6

‘N.Z. cursed by power-drunk union leaders’

New Zealand was cursed by a few union leaders who were drunk with power, the Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon, told delegates at the Asia-Pacific regional conference of Jaycees International yesterday. “A few whose motive is not money or kickbacks, but power, paralyse industries great and small,” Mr Muldoon said in an address to open the conference at the Christchurch Town Hall.

Unchecked, a handful of these people could bring the whole country and its economy to a halt, he said. Last year more than $23 million was lost in wages through industrial action, and already this year $7 million had been lost. Millions of dollars had been added to the cost of disrupted construction contracts and many millions lost through inability to fulfil export orders, Mr Muldoon said. There had also been hardship to families, townships, and workers in ancillary industries. “Each of a few major recent current industrial disturbances in this country was ignited and fuelled by one man or a small clique around him,” Mr Muldoon said. “In each case the leading stoker could have

doused the industrial fires as easily as he started them, simply by exercising reason and having recourse to rule of law.”

There was an urgent need for men of temperate disposition concerned with their members’ real welfare who had the training and ability to evaluate employer proposals, measure demands against ability to pay, and to heed the national interest.

History had shown that “tremendous upheavals” could be caused by small, determined minorities. Factors such as economic recession, unemployment, crime, drug-taking, pornography, family break-ups, and argument in high places about nuclear weapons created a climate in which false leaders thrived.

They attracted, in industrial unions in particular, a core of followers not bright enough to see through the deception, Mr Muldoon said. He was sure that at least some of those factors existed in delegates’ own countries, said Mr Muldoon.

What was needed were trained leaders committed to principles such as faith in God, the brotherhood of man, individual freedom and dignity, the rule of law, and service to humanity. He was addressing the

potential leaders of the most dynamic region in the world, he said. New Zealand’s links in trade and social and cultural relationships with Asia and the Pacific had to gain strength. Closer economic relations with Australia was one example of this, yet many people had difficulty grasping the benefits of cooperation. The Jaycees could contribute much to the region by eliminating that “inwardlooking, entrenched attitude,” Mr Muldoon said. On Saturday, addressing the annual conference of the Canterbury-Westland division of the National Party at Lincoln College, Mr Muldoon criticised the Federation of Labour leadership and its campaign for a $2O a week wage rise. Under the leadership of Mr Jim Knox, the F.O.L. was a “shambles,” he said. Hearing the comments of the former F.O.L. leader, Sir Thomas Skinner, who did not support the $2O a week claim, was like hearing “a voice from the grave.” “It is a pity they do not talk to old Tom because if they did he would tell them a bit of common sense about the way the F.O.L. is behaving at present,” Mr Muldoon said.