Mr Douglas backs awards

Press, 15 April 1986, Page 14

Mr Douglas backs awards

PA Wellington Workers at smaller businesses and in rural areas would suffer if national awards were removed, according to the Federation of Labour’s secretary, Mr Ken Douglas.

He was one of the speakers at a seminar in Wellington at which the Government’s Green Paper on Industrial relations reform was discussed and analysed. Enterprise unions and localised wage bargaining would enable people at larger worksites to look after themselves, but others would be cut adrift, he said on Saturday. “It is ridiculous to suggest that two workers in a small shop in Otaki have

any real bargaining position at all with their employer. "Reality tells us they have none unless they are part of a broader union structure within which the interests of workers in small, medium, and large worksites within an industry are integrated to establish credibility and bargaining,” he said. The seminar was organised by the Industrial Relations Centre at Victoria University and will be followed by another with the same theme and speakers in Auckland on April 18. Mr Douglas said that averaged-sized workplace in New Zealand employed only 11 workers. “If a relatively small number of large workplaces are

excluded from the figures, the average workplace employment falls to around seven.” The advent of enterprise unions based on individual companies rather than occupations would cause a fragmentation of unions into small units, he said.

The modem industrial relations climate required bigger unions with resources, he said. “This also needs to be seen in the context of a growing monopoly influence and domination over most industries,” he said.

Mr Douglas argued that in spite of employer calls for greater flexibility in wage fixing, sufficient opportunity existed within the present system of

national awards. “I believe that their proposals amount to a desire to drive down wages by destroying awards, disrupting union structures, and doing whatever else is necessary to achieve a low wage economy in New Zealand.

“The position adopted by them is all the more dishonest when it is remembered that subtantial agreement on reforms to the wage-fixing system had been reached by early 1984 following three years of protracted talks.

“That substantial agreement was subsequently finalised and used as the basis for the legislation under which bargaining was recommenced following the lifting of the wage

freeze.” The agreement came about with substantial compromises on both sides, said Mr Douglas. “Now we find the employers are back with their ‘hidden agenda* less than two years after signing on the dotted line.” “Indeeed, they were back with their hidden agenda less than one month after the tripartite agreement on wage fixing (Employers’ Federation, Federation of Labour, and the Government) had been hammered out in 1984.

“It is accordingly somewhat Ironic that one of the key areas of reform sought by the employers is what they refer to as ‘sanctity of agreement,’ ” Mr Douglas said.