Wage round ‘needs four-way approach’

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 28

Wage round ‘needs four-way approach’

PA Hastings A four-way balancing act would be necessary in this year’s national award round if wage and salary earners were to make real progress, the national secretary of the Shop Employees Union, Mr Rob Campbell, has said. Mr Campbell told the National Association of Retail Grocers and Supermarkets that the four-pronged approach to the wage round would “strike fear into the hearts of unions, employers and Government.” Priorities would be a strong move to increase the legal minimum wage significantly, a formula to compensate for the effects of inflation both before and after the wage round, a move to lift minimum award wages in general, and a way of allowing both employers and unions to negotiate wages which reflected the needs of the market place.

It was a pity the Government’s new wage-fixing system was already facing enormous pressure without having been given the chance to work, Mr Campbell said. The previous Government, after nearly three years of a wage and price freeze, was about to impose radical changes to the wage bargaining system which would have led to a substantial deregulation of the labour market, he said. This had been stopped by change of government, though the new wages reform legislation did open up some flexibility in wage negotiations. A new element which had been injected into the process was direct wage subsidy to compensate for price rises, particularly for those with low incomes. Such subsidies for family care or rent payments created problems for the union movement, Mr Camp-

bell said. They undermined union: negotiating positions even) though they were welcomed by those who would receive them and they were difficult to replace when economic conditions improv-' ed. They also subsidised low wage employers whether, those employers deserved a wage subsidy or not. The wage negotiation system had to be underpinned by a clear prices and incomes policy and not by Cabinet Ministers “plucking figures out of the air like 6 per cent real wage decline or 10 per cent wage guidelines limit,” he said. Another feature of the national award system which could not remain was the 12-month rule, which meant wages would rise only once a year while all other costs were able to be adjusted far more often, Mr Campbell said.