Why the sudden epidemic of strikes?

Press, 5 December 1985, Page 1

Why the sudden epidemic of strikes?

By GLENN HASZARD, industrial reporter The increased frequency of strikes is not unexpected and can be seen as a sequel to the wage freeze, according to an expert in incomes policy, Dr Jonathon Boston, a lecturer in political science at the University of Canterbury. Statistics kept by the Labour Department and collated by the Statistics Department are not yet available for the last three months, since the wage round began, but there has clearly been an upsurge of industrial activity by trade unions since the round started in September. The more notable stoppages have been those by drivers, clerical worker,

engineers, rubber workers, hotel workers, journalists, and bus drivers. All the groups of workers except journalists went on strike or are on strike over money. The journalists’ dispute was over union exemptions. Dr Boston said that it would have been unusual if there had not been an upsurge in militancy now, going on historical precedents in other countries as well as New Zealand. “It is common practice for an upsurge in industrial unrest after a period of wage and price controls,” he said. "What usually happens is that there is a slight downturn in industrial activity

during a period of controls. As the incomes policy continues generally there will be a gradual upsurge in activity over a variety of issues and toward the end of the incomes policy period these will become more pay-related. When the controls come off you normally get an upsurge in industrial militancy,” he said. The other times when militancy tended to increase was in times of rising economic prosperity and falling unemployment. This year had seen a marrying of both these factors in New Zealand, with an end to the wage controls coming at the end of last year and relatively buoyant economic conditions this year until recently.

Another phenomenon was that once a significant number of groups of workers took action it tended to give an example of what could be achieved to other groups, who followed suit, said Dr Boston. “Second, and more important, is that in the present jcircumstances there is a low-pay revolt. It is significant that a number of groups taking action have not taken it before and are generally regarded as lowpaid.” The director of the Canterbury Employers’ Association, Mr Colin Mclnnes, said that it seemed that the Government had failed to capitalise on the good will and consensus attitude

which prevailed soon after it was elected, when it had its economic summit and Government, the employers, and unions reached an accord on wage-fixing. Some sections of the workforce were taking short-term expedient action with disregard for the effects on business, employment, and ultimately the national economy, said Mr Mclnnes. “The workforce seems to be of the view that if you want something you just have to strike, and that you can do so with total impunity because no-one is doing anything about it,” he said. r ‘We have reached the point where the system is in chaos. There must be reform of the system. Em-

ployers welcome an opportunity to change the system through the Government’s planned Green Paper on industrial relations and live in hope that sanity will prevail, to everyone’s advantage,” said Mr Mclnnes. Mr Martin Moodie, acting secretary of the Canterbury Hotel Workers’ Union, said that unions which had tended to be weak in the past had now become better organised and their members had become more involved. “The number of delegates in this union is 10 times what it was two years ago. More and more it is they who are running the disputes in our type of union,” said Mr Moodie.

As well as the greater involvement of the members in union activity there had also been a realisation by the union leaders since voluntary unionism that unions were under attack and had to fight back, and the obvious way was to get better wages for members, said Mr Moodie. Women in the union movement were no longer prepared to accept just what was given to them by their employers. “There has been a swing away from the male-domin-ated image of unions. Women have been viewed as industrial pussycats, but now they are becoming the industrial tigers,” said Mr Moodie.

Mr Raymond Harbridge, a lecturer in industrial relations at Victoria Univerity’s Industrial Relations Centre in Wellington, said that employers had generally got out of the wage freeze cheaply at the end of the last year when the Government imposed a wage guideline of about 7 per cent. The increase had been too low in the light of increases in mortgage interest rates and other increases in the cost of living. This had led to rank-and-file pressure for a substantial wage increase which should have been met last year or by an adjustment in the middle of this year, said Mr Harbridge. t