Employers warned about breaking wages policy

Press, 12 April 1984, Page 3

Employers warned about breaking wages policy

Parliamentary reporter The Government will not allow its counterinflationary policy to be jeopardised by union demands, according to the Minister of Labour, Mr Bolger. He told the Employers’ Convention in Wellington yesterday that he hoped he had made himself clear.

Any employer who might consider submitting to union demands for a further wage increase on the grounds that it would cost more to resist was being totally irresponsible, Mr Bolger said.

Aside from the odium that attached to breaking the law, any such concession under New Zealand’s relatively bound wage-fixing system would simply compromise all other employers, he said. The weight of responsibility for ensuring sensible, non-inflationary wage rates rested with employers, not

unions. The most important challenge facing employers was to ensure that the gains in competitive advantage arising from the freeze were not dissipated by a return to high inflation. The statement by the president of the Manufacturers’ Federation that manufacturers were vulnerable to strikes in support of claims for higher wages because of low stocking levels, had missed the point that a concession to such claims would choke off the very recovery that his members were benefiting from.

It would also reverse the recent improvement in employment trends. To those employers who would have preferred to negotiate with their workers this year, Mr Bolger said their workers through their respective unions, having first agreed that they would

negotiate wage rates this year then changed their minds and asked for a cost-of-living allowance of equal amount to all workers.

The $8 a week across-the-board increase was the end of wage increases for 1984, Mr Bolger said. After some “bedding in” problems, voluntary unionism would become as much a way of life in New Zealand as Saturday trading had become, he said. There was clear evidence that a number of less well organised unions had become much more active in “selling their wares” to their members. The logical conclusion of this process was an improved level of services to union members and a union that was more closely in tune with the wishes of the rank and file, Mr Bolger said. This must in the end break down some of the entrenched attitudes held by

union officials. The Labour spokesman on Labour, Mr E. E. Isbey (Papatoetoe), said Mr Bolger’s comments to the employers were “the height of humbug.”

Responsibility for industrial action spreading throughout New Zealand because of the $8 a week general wage order rested with the Government, not with employers. So did responsibility for the millions of dollars in lost production now arising from disputes about voluntary unionism, he said. Employers forced to kowtow to the Government’s dictatorial decreas on wages were now being threatened if they yielded.

As with voluntary unionism, so with the general wage order, Mr Isbey said. The employers were being forced to be “the meat in the Government’s hamfisted sandwich.”