Few unions plan pay campaign

Press, 12 April 1984, Page 1

Few unions plan pay campaign

Few Canterbury trade unions have any immediate plans to campaign for higher wages and conditions in the wake of the $8 cost-of-living order which took effect, from April 1. The Federation of Labour has said it will support any unions taking action to try to improve wages and conditions and several Auckland unions have already held stop-work meetings or asked employers for wage rises.

In Canterbury, the first group of workers to take action was at Timaru, where 100 fish processors at Ferons Seafood factory went on strike from April 6 in protest against the cost-of-living order.

The union representing the processors wants a return to free wage bargain-

ing and a 15 per cent pay rise.

Stores workers are also seeking higher wages. The secretary of the Canterbury Stores, Packing and Warehouse Workers’ Union, Mr P. E. Piesse, said in Christchurch yesterday that the union intended to “put the. hard word on” selected employers. “We will be talking to individual employers on individual job sites and it will be serious talk,” said Mr Piesse. He would not comment on whai sort of increase was sought or what action would be taken if the employers refused to negotiate.

No other unions in Canterbury are known to be seeking meetings with employers. The Canterbury Hotel, Restaurant, Hospital and

Related Workers’ Union would call meetings soon to discuss the wage order, said a spokesman. Combined State Unions delegates will meet next „ month to organise support for a campaign against the wage freeze and for the right to bargain with the Government. The chairman of the Combined State Unions, Mr Ron Burgess, said the meetings throughout New Zealand would be part of their policy of informing members and organising support for the C.S.U. campaign. He said that for a whole life of a Government the unions had been denied any right to bargain about wages or conditions of work. “The union movement has now come to the point of view that it will not tolerate this kind of interference in its democratic rights any longer,” he said. The C.S.U. executive would call for the State Services Co-ordinating Committee to live up to its responsibilities to see that State employees had adequate methods of representing the urgent industrial problems which were continually growing in the State services.

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