State bodies’ union coverage at issue

Press, 31 May 1986, Page 8

State bodies’ union coverage at issue

By

MARTIN FREETH

In Wellington

The Government caucus is at odds with businessmen appointed to help set up new State corporations over the key issue of union coverage for their staff.

Two establishment boards have told the Ministers who appointed them that the Forestry, and Land Development and Management boards should have employees outside the Public Service and represented by private sector unions.

That preference has been echoed by officials who have reported to the

Government on commercialising the airways administration.

Reports by the two boards and the officials’ group were released yesterday, a day after the caucus resolved in favour of retaining the corporation staff as public servants.

The resolution, in line with a call by the Combined State Unions, said the State Services Conditions of Employment Act, 1977, should be modified to cater for the new type of public servant A counter argument to have corporation staff employed, instead, under the Industrial Relations

Act, 1973, is forcefully put in a report on setting up the Forestry Corporation. “The corporation cannot afford to bring the public sector culture into the new environment which must have a market culture.”

Its report recommends the corporation have a private sector workforce to enable it to negotiate directly pay and conditions, taking account of regional differences and the competitive nature of its industry. Without "equivalent change” in personnel and industrial management, the gains in corporatisation will “in all probabil-

ity be negated,” the report says.

The board’s chairman, Mr Alan Gibbs, said yesterday the caucus resolution provided some comfort in that State Services legislation could be amended to provide for the special circumstances of the corporation. The Land Development and Management Corporation establishment board has also recommended that staff be in the private sector, but it will reconsider if the State Services legislation is amended soon to eliminate elements unsuitable to a commercial organisation. The establishment of airports as limited liability companies meant their staff would move outside the Public Service, says the officials’ group examining commercialisation of the Civil Aviation Division. The Minister of State Services, Mr Rodger, said yesterday that while the Government would take account of these reports, its final decisions on union coverage would also be influenced by other factors.