Delay over wage rise disappoints
PA Wellington The acting chairman of the Combined State Unions, Mr Colin Hicks, is disappointed that the Minister of Finance, Mr Douglas, opposes an immediate general wage increase and a system of indexation to protect against price increases pending a return to normal wage bargaining. Mr Hicks said that the Federation of Labour and the C.S.U. had not had a response to calls for the increase and index, made to the Government in several meetings since August 8. It was “disconcerting . . . to find the Minister of Finance pre-empting the Government’s position in a public statement before we have had the courtesy of a reply,” said Mr Hicks. Wage and salary earners, with incomes frozen, had not been compensated for the impact of devaluation and the removal of controls on interest rates, he said. A meeting of sector leaders agreed to a threemonth extension of the wage and price freeze from July 18 to allow the Government to develop policy, but the prize freeze had not been applied in the spirit of
that agreement. Food prices had increased 1.5 per cent in one month and 547 price increases, because of higher import costs, had been notified to the Trade and Industry Department since the devaluation. Also home owners had been hit with big increases in mortgage interest payments. “The freeze is totally onesided and inequitable. Only wages remain effectively frozen, while vital costs of living — such as paying the mortgage, buying the food and paying for petrol — have been rising,” said Mr Hirkcj “The F.O.L. and C.S.U. have not asked for permanent indexation but they have asked for adequate protection in the period between the election of a new Government and the resumption of bargaining under the new wage-fixing machinery. “I can only hope that the Minister of Finance was not commenting on the transitional arrangements for wage protection, and that we will get a positive response from the Government to what has become an urgent problem for workers,” he said.
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Press, 4 October 1984, Page 17
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335Delay over wage rise disappoints Press, 4 October 1984, Page 17
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