Unions deny backing down

Press, 28 November 1984, Page 1

Unions deny backing down

By

MICHAEL HANNAH

in Wellington State unions have accused an unknown party to the tripartite wage talks of deliberately misrepresenting undertakings they gave in response to the Government’s offer of wage guidelines of 4 and 4.5 per cent. The chairman of the Combined State Unions, Mr Ron Burgess, strongly denied yesterday a statement by a top employers’ advocate in Rotorua that the unions had backed down on agreements on the two guideline offers. Mr Burgess said the union representatives had agreed only to take the guideline offers back to their executives for further discussion. They had given no undertaking either to accept or to recommend the offers to their executives, he said. “Whoever is misrepresenting us, I don’t know. But whoever it is is creating a great deal of mischief,” Mr Burgess said. In a separate statement issued yesterday, Mr Burgess also attacked what he described as an inflexible unhelpful line adopted by the Minister of Finance, Mr Douglas, in an address Mr Douglas gave to employers’ advocates in Rotorua on Monday. He contrasted Mr Douglas’s attitude with that of the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, who had picked up the unions’ offer to keep .talking after the guideline talks collapsed last week. “The Minister of Finance seems intent on slamming the door. I cannot understand the actions of the Minister of Finance, but of much more importance is his allegation that the unions in general, and the

State unions in particular, have not attached sufficient importance to maintaining jobs,” Mr Burgess said. “Nobody could have sat through the talks of the last few' weeks or read the papers presented to those talks, without realising that the job issue is at the centre of the whole debate.”

Mr Burgess was particularly upset, however, by a statement by Mr Max Bradford, the director of advocacy for the Employers’ Federation. Addressing a meeting of employers’ advocates in Rotorua on Monday, Mr Bradford had said the talks collapsed when the unions backed down on an agreement for a 4.5 per cent guideline.

Mr Bradford asserted that Mr Lange almost walked out of the tripartite talks when unions said that 4.5 per cent was unacceptable and that they were sticking to 11.2 per cent. According to Mr Bradford, Mr Lange made it clear to the unions that to welsh on a deal once in a week — a reference to the earlier rejection of a 4 per cent guideline — was acceptable but that to welsh on a deal twice was not. Mr Burgess yesterday maintained the unions had never agreed to either guideline. He said that on the day the Government offered 4 per cent, Mr Knox had asked that the offer be put

in writing. At a meeting that day, the offer was not presented in writing, but was instead tabled at the meeting, Mr Burgess said. “There was simply no comment from the president of the F.O.L. or myself regarding the acceptability or otherwise of that proposal,” he said. The union leaders went away, discussed the offer, and decided to reject it. Mr Knox undertook to telephone the unions’ reply to Mr Lange, but was unable to reach the Prime Minister. Instead, he passed the message on through one of Mr Lange’s secretaries. The next day, the Government offered 4.5 per cent, and Cabinet Ministers met

the union representatives separately from employers and Government officials, Mr Burgess said. It was at this meeting that Mr Lange expressed disappointment that the unions had welshed on the first agreement. The unions had four options open to them in looking at 4.5 per cent, Mr Burgess indicated. They could have rejected the offer outright, or they could have accepted it, if it was within the negotiating discretions allowed by their executives. If it was not within these limits, the unions could have said they would recommend the figure to their executives, or they could have said they would refer it back to their executives for further discussion. In the event, Messrs Knox and Burgess told the Cabinet Ministers that they

would take the offer back to their executives for discussion. This line fell far short of accepting or even recommending the figure, Mr Burgess said. “We decided quite clearly we could not recommend it, but we could take it back to our members,” he said. Ministers then took the employers aside for a private talk. Mr Burgess said he was astounded when he saw Mr Bradford’s reported comments yesterday, as none of the employers’ representatives were at the meeting between the unions and the Government. But he said he had concluded that, judging from comments passed on by the news media, there was a determination to misrepresent the unions’ position.

One comment passed on to him was that Mr Knox had been seen to shake hands twice on the deal, accepting a guideline. “That is just not true,” Mr Burgess said. He said that the unions would still try to arrive at a guideline before the wage round started on Monday, though he believed it was optimistic to expect to arrive at a guideline with only a fortnight’s discussions. “I say we have to try to get one. Our position is negotiable,” he said. He considered the idea of a general wage order as an interim measure presented problems, though it would be considered. It would not meet the difference which had grown during the wage freeze between State tradesmen’s wages and private sector tradesmen’s wages, he said, and this differential was making it hard for the State to retain tradesmen. He expected union leaders to give their response to Mr Lange today or tomorrow, after meetings between their own officials and then their executives. In his separate statement, Mr Burgess called on Mr Douglas to withdraw remarks he made in Rotorua. Unions were in conflict with Mr Douglas over his view of the possible adjustment in the economy, if wages lagged behind prices by a substantial amount. “We have produced hard evidence and convincing argument to show that the contraction of the domestic economy will not be offset by a sufficiently large expansion in the foreign trade sectors of our economy. The result will be rising unemployment,” Mr Burgess said. "Our intention was to try to cushion that blow.”