Employers urge flexibility

Press, 23 November 1983, Page 6

Employers urge flexibility

PA Wellington Legislative changes are needed to provide greater flexibility in the bargaining system, says the executive director of the Employers’ Federation, Mr J. W. Rowe. Speaking in Auckland at the annual meeting of the Chartered Institute of Transport, Mr Rowe said New Zealand’s industrial relations system had developed into a highly technical framework of legalistically defined rights, duties, and responsibilities. “As with all such precisely defined regulatory systems, it is often a difficult task to incorporate change in order to react to the requirements of an ever-changing and constantly developing society — and that is the task which faces employer, worker, and Government alike,” he told the meeting. “The bargaining system needs greater flexibility to provide for true industry and enterprise codes of employment separate from, and in addition to, the broad-based award structure.

“This is an example of the kind of flexibility that the present bargaining structure does not provide for, and which is needed so that employers and workers are able to negotiate, where desired, a code of employment containing terms and conditions relevant to a particular industry or enterprise.

He also criticised strict horizontal relativity in wage bargaining as in the transport sector, pointing out the federation’s concern about the threatened spread of superior wage rates and conditions in the freightforwarding sector.

On voluntary unionism, Mr Rowe said that the federation recommended a “union workplace agreement” as a possible middle ground between voluntary and compulsory unionism. The federation agreed that change was needed in the present industrial legislation to allow ratification of the International Labour Organisation’s convention 87 on employer and worker rights.