5.1% rise ‘justifies union complaint’

Press, 10 July 1985, Page 1

5.1% rise ‘justifies union complaint’

By PATRICIA HERBERT The 5.1 per cent increase in prices last quarter will increase union anger at the rejection of the interim wage order claim. The chairman of the Combined State Unions, Mr Ron Burgess, was told yesterday that the Cabinet had finally rejected the application because in the words of the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, it was “not part of the Government’s agenda.” Mr Burgess said that the price increases workers had experienced this year had also “not been on the unions’ agenda.” “When we agreed last year to a wage round starting in September this year with a 10-month life for present agreements, we were doing it on the basis of 3.3 per cent inflation to the end of March and 1.5 per cent to the end of June,” he said. Instead, the March increase was 4.4 per cent and the unions were forecasting a June increase two or three times the Treasury

estimate, Mr Burgess said. The latest C.P.I. movement was 5.1 per cent, which was higher than the unions’ predictions. Mr Burgess said no specific figure had been put on the claim for an immediate wage adjustment but the unions could have gone two ways. The first was to go for an increase to compensate workers for income erosion this year, estimated by the Treasury at 6.4 per cent. The second was to seek the difference between the inflation forecast and “what really happened” — a formula which would produce a wage demand of about 4 per cent. Had some form of immediate pay relief been given, it would have taken some heat off award negotiations, Mr Burgess said. Some workers would be unhappy that they would have to wait until later in the year to get compensation for price increases, he said.