Joint union talks planned

Press, 2 November 1984, Page 4

Joint union talks planned

By PATRICIA HERBERT in Wellington The first steps towards uniting all New Zealand unionists under a single banner will be taken at a conference in Wellington on February 18 and 19 next year. The occasion will be the preliminary conference oh the proposal to form a Council of Trade Unions which will replace the present Federation of Labour and Combined State Unions and will embrace all nonaffiliated unions.

The conference is fully supported by both the F.O.L. ana the C.S.U. and will be convened by the inter-union working party appointed in 1982 after the move was floated for discussion by the Public Service Association.

Invitations will be sent to every union to ensure the broadest possible participation in the planning stages. On behalf of the working party, the president of the

F.0.L., Mr Jim Knox, and the chairman of the C.S.U., Mr Ron Burgess, said the conference would discuss the concept of the new council and would try to reach agreement bn the draft constitution and structure, “a very difficult task.”' “The working party has hammered out proposals for a new organisation which will be significantly different from the present F.O.L. and C.S.U., they said. "Our aim is to make the C.T.U. more effective, more efficient and more democratic.”

They said the union movement in New Zealand had been fragmented for too long and that it was in the interests of everyone — the Government, employers, and unions — to have one body to speak for all workers. <

The Minister of Labour, Mr Rodger, is known actively to support the idea.