Mr Bolger questions need to make redundancy payments

Press, 14 March 1984, Page 2

Mr Bolger questions need to make redundancy payments

Parliamentary reporter The Minister of Labour,. Mr Bolger, has questioned the need for redundancy payments, saying they deter employers from taking on more staff. In a speech apparently .aimed at both his Parliamentary colleagues, who are expected to vote for a new deputy leader tomorrow, and at voters at large, Mr Bolger identified himself with major Government moves to remove Government control. He also suggested that an urgent scrutiny was needed of redundancy payments. On the eve of the resumption of wage-fixing talks, Mr Bolger was addressing the Nelson Chamber of Commerce a few hours after the February employment figures were released showing a drop in unemployment levels last month. He said, however, that to improve employment further, employers must believe they will benefit from creating more jobs and taking on additional staff. However, they had to meet double obligations in the form of weekly pay cheques and also redundancy payments, Mr Bolger said.

“The development of policies entitling employees to redundancy payments has in my view deterred many employers from taking on additional staff,” he said. “It is argued that employees who have worked to assist an employer are entitled to such payments to compensate them, the worker, for; the job they have lost. But are they?” Mr Bolger argued that there was no reverse obligation on an employee, leaving his job perhaps at a crucial time, taking a necessary skill with him, to compensate the employer who had provided him with the means of acquirng a skill and earning an income. “Further, should not employers be considered to nave discharged their obligation to their workers if they pay them at the appropriate rate and provide correct working conditions?” he said. “The situation has emerged now where often employees are more interested In obtaining large redundancy pay-outs than in obtaining an alternative job.” Mr Bolger also challenged people who had opposed youth rates, referring them to the number of schoolleavers registered as unemployed. Although there was a drop in these numbers last month, Mr Bolger said the figure was “much too high” and he urged employers to give more opportunities to those seeking their first job. Mr Bolger’s comments indicate that any softening of the Government’s stance in the beleaguered wage-fixing talks is unlikely today. The talks are already threatened by rolling stoppages which' meat workers are threatening to impose to force a general wage order and return to wage-bargaining with employers, and the Federation of Labour has described the talks as having broken down earlier this year. Mr Bolger took time out

last evening to identify himself with three moves the Government has undertaken to reduce Government controls. Noting that there had been a “sudden reawakening of interest” in philosophical issues, Mr Bolger said the National Party had no difficulty in defending its record as the party which had carried “the free enterprise banner” in New Zealand since the war. There were times when more emphasis had been placed on one or other asKt of basic philosphy, rever, Mr Bolger said. In a swipe at the New Zealand Party’s leader, Mr Bob Jones, he said the Government’s efforts to reduce unnecessary controls happened “long before the emergence of the Jones Party and will continue long after Jones is just another Jones.” Mr Bolger identified himself with the introduction of Saturday shopping, delicensing of the meat industry, and the introduction of voluntary unionism. He criticised employers and unions who had opposed change to protect their present benefits. On voluntary unionism, he said the new law would free up attitudes and practices in the next year or so, and would play a catalytic role in speeding up development in New Zealand. “Just as some of the protective licensing systems spoken of earlier bad to go, so must some of the rigidities in employment practice that inhibit development and, importantly, inhibit additional employment opportunities,” he said. Reform of the wagebargaining system was necessary and, desirably, should involve a less rigid system, less guided by flowons from one award to the next, irrespective of different business and employment conditions. Mr Bolger said the issue had to be resolved. A vacuum could not be left in this area.