‘Nil’ wage order not regretted

Press, 2 September 1983, Page 4

‘Nil’ wage order not regretted

Judge A. P. Blair retired from the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority yesterday after 25 years on the Bench.

He was born in Gisborne in 1912, educated at Christ’s College and Auckland University College, and practised law in Gisborne before being appointed a stipendiary magistrate in Christchurch in 1958. He served as a judge on the Court of Arbitration from 1964 to 1974, when he was appointed to be the Appeal Authority for the Accident Compensation Commission as it was known when it was established that year.

Judge Blair has spent a life doing what he calls the job of a tradesman.

“I’ve done my best with each case as it has arisen. I think every judge has to work as hard as he can and do the best he can and that’s all,” he said.

' His work as an appeal authority has meant that he has had to travel to centres

throughout New Zealand and he has enjoyed the experience. “I have found the work as Appeal Authority very rewarding. It has been most interesting to have been in on the birth of a novel, quite radical act and to have helped in its evolution.

“As I have said in new

my book on the 1982 act, the act cannot please everyone and it can never be a panacea for all the miseries and hardships of personal injury. Its significant contribution to compensation law is to bring a large measure of economic security into the lives of accident victims who, before the act was passed, had to take their chances on the ‘forensic lottery.’ “One of the fascinating aspects of the job is the insights one gets into the human animal and the different varieties of people and their different reactions to misfortune,” said Judge Blair.

He is reluctant to speculate on contemporary problems such as voluntary unionism or what will happen when the wage freeze is lifted, but he does want to correct the impression that many people have of him as the judge who brought down the “nil” wage order in 1968, causing such a stir that eventually the unions and employers came back to the Courts in a combined ap-

proach. Judge Blair was outvoted on the Court, which by a majority granted a 5 per cent wage order two months after the “nil” order.

“I was a judge of the Arbitration Court for 10 years. It was a fascinating experience. It involved hard work and was sometimes enormously frustrating because it was a time of full employment, the unions had plenty of industrial muscle, and were inclined to accept only decisions which were favourable to them.

“But I am certainly not an anti-union man. The unions are an essential part of our way of living. “As the the so-called ‘nil’ general wage order, it was in my opinion a mild, moderate, and sensible decision having regard to the economic situation. “The evil of inflation was just beginning, the European Economic Community negotiations were being finalised, and to me it seemed essential that we should get ourselves ■.in a strong competitive position

on the international market. “The ‘nil’ order wasn’t very drastic — it simply said that we should have no general wage order for six months. It did not affect the right of unions to obtain ordinary wage increases through award negotiations,” said Judge Blair.

“I have often thought since that had some notice been taken of it we might have been spared some of the evils that rapid inflation has brought us, both economically and socially. “I sometimes feel that my many other decisions in the Arbitration Court will be forgotten and I shall be remembered simply as the notorious author of the ‘nil’ general wage order.” Judge Blair lives with his wife in Cashmere. They have three married daughters, one of whom lives in Christchurch, the others on farms in the North Island. He said he hoped to spend more time playing golf, which is his main recreation. He has a handicap of 16.