No ‘fast track’ to end unionism rows

Press, 8 March 1984, Page 6

No ‘fast track’ to end unionism rows

The new legislation on voluntary unionism has been designed to protect the worker, but leaves the employers to make do with common law, according to the deputy executive director of the Employers’ Federation, Mr R. E. Taylor. Mr Taylor told Stokes Valley Rotarians that there was nothing practicable in the legislation for employers to enable them to speedily resolve a dispute when clashes between union members and one or more non-members effectively closed an enterprise. “During last year’s Parliamentary Select Committee hearings, the Emiloyers’ Federation urged he committee to give some fast-track protection for employers against the kind of dispute we have recently had at the Otahuhu railway workshops, Feltex, and at

the brewery at Timaru,” he said. No fast track was provided within the law, Mr Taylor said, and employers should be wary of thinking there might be outside the law. “One recourse employers have under the new legislation is to sue after the event for losses incurred during the stoppage,” he said. There was always access to common-law injunctions in the High Court which were both formal and expensive, he said. What the federation had hoped for was an industrial injunction in the Arbitration Court, to enable an industrial dispute to be solved in an industrial environment, said Mr Taylor. He advised any employers faced with such problems to approach their local employers’ association.

The Employers’ Federation, in conjunction with > regional employment associations, had supported the principle of voluntary unionism, said Mr Taylor. It recognised the need to repeal parts of the Industrial Relations Act, 1973, and bring the act into line with the International Labour Organisation’s convention on freedom of association.

Under the amended legislation no preference or favouritism might be given to union members or non-union members when selecting people for jobs or promotion, said Mr Taylor. The legislation also made it unlawful to exert undue influence on a worker with the intention of inducing that worker to join or not to join a union, and the act defined undue influence, he said.