Company wants pay action

Press, 13 April 1984, Page 1

Company wants pay action

PA Wellington N.Z. Forest Products has written to the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, seeking a return to wage negotiations with representatives of its 9500 employees. Forest Products’ managing director, Mr Warren Hunt, said from Christchurch last evening that he had written “a constructive letter” to Sir Robert. Mr Hunt said the company, New Zealand’s second largest, was anxious to see a new long-term wage-fix-ing system put in place. This would enable his company to get back “to responsible free bargaining” with representatives of the company’s 9500 employees. It is the second time in six months that Mr Hunt has found it necessary to

the Government’s then proposed voluntary unionism legislation as unworkable for big employers. The president of the Employers’ Federation, Mr Garry Tait, described the contents of the letter as distressing. He said it did not reflect a widely held viewpoint in employer ranks.

However, he conceded that the executive director of the Freezing Companies’ Association, Mr Peter Blomfield, was on record as wanting a return to conciliation on conditions — specifically non-monetary negotiations covering the introduction of new technology.

comment on the handling of industrial matters by the Government Last October he described

Forest Products’ executive director, Mr L. R. McDowall, was critical of the Government’s relaxation

of the price freeze at the Employers’ Federation biennial conference in Wellington this week. In front of the Minister of Labour, Mr Bolger, Mr McDowall said, “I wonder why the Government did not reimpose the price freeze in the form that it existed before the general wage order rather than partially lift it in the way it has been done, and yet continue now a total wage freeze.” Mr McDowall also described a suggestion by the executive director of the Employers’ Federation, Mr J. W. Rowe — to cut out penal wage payments as a means of solving New Zealand’s employment problems — as unrealistic in the real world.

The Employers’ Federation’s conference ended yes-

terday with calls from Mr Tait; the managing director of the Ford Motor Company of New Zealand, Ltd, Mr J. Auton; and the works supervisor of the Alliance Freezing Company (Southland) Ltd, Mr P. R. Giannotti, on the need for employer solidarity during the F.0.L.orchestrated campaign of industrial action.

Mr Auton said employers had a responsibility to pay their tax on the Government’s conquest of inflation. “None of us expected the exit from the wage-price freeze to be easy. There is now blood on the floor . . .

let us stand together and see that it is not spilt in vain.”

Mr Tait said that employers could well be asked just where they stood in the next few days and weeks.