Funding threatened by wage-rise plan

Press, 28 June 1983, Page 9

Funding threatened by wage-rise plan

If the Metro Refuse Committee breaches the wage freeze by giving its staff a pay rise, the Waimairi District Council will partially withdraw its financial support of the committee, according to the council’s chairman, Mr D. B. Rich, last evening. The Metro committee was asked by the Labourer’s Union at a meeting yesterday to investigate ways of legally giving staff at the Metro refuse stations a wage increase, said Mr I. G. Clark, chairman of the committee and a Waimariri District councillor. The union had given no specific proposal about how the freeze might be breached but he believed it had some ideas, said Cr Clark. He was concerned that those ideas might be illegal. Asked how much of an increase the union was considering, Cr Clark said no specific figure had been named but he assumed it would be $2O a week. Mr Rich, who is not a member of the refuse com-

mittee, said last evening that he did not believe there were any legal ways of breaching the freeze to give the staff a pay rise. The approaches made by the Labourers’ Union were improper and illegal. It was asking the committee to assist it in breaking the freeze, he said. The propositions were not in the interest of the ratepayers or the nation he said. The Waimairi District Council was opposed to any illegal steps to breach the freeze and would make sure that none of the council’s money would be used in pursuing those steps, Mr Rich said. The council would not jeopardise the Metro refuse scheme, he said. “I would ask for other local bodies’ support in opposing any breaches of the freeze. It cannot be allowed to proceed,” he said. The Labourer’s Union had approached the committee a month ago, and the matter had been referred to Metro refuse staff. Cr Clark said he had discussed the issue

with staff and had put a recommendation to the meeting that nothing be done, as it was an inappropriate time. The recommendation was lost. The meeting had voted by four votes to three to seek a legal opinion on ways of giving station staff a pay increase. Some of the councillors had been sympathetic to the union’s position, he said. The committee members who had opposed the motion to seek a legal opinion believed that there was no legal means of breaching the freeze, said Cr Clark. “If there was a way of breaching the Wage Freeze Regulations I presume it would have been done long ago,” he said. Cr Clark said he had voted against the motion. “I just hope that the decision will not rebound on the Metro Refuse Committee,” he said. As chairman of the committee he would have no part of any illegal means of breaching the freeze, he said. It would be “sheer stupidity.”