Industrial confrontation looming

Press, 26 August 1986, Page 1

Industrial confrontation looming

By

PATRICIA HERBERT

in Wellington

Both unions and employers are gearing up for a bruising industrial confrontation this year after ending the tripartite wage conference yesterday without agreement on a managed round. The Minister of Labour, Mr Rodger, said the initiative had foundered on employer resistance to the format proposed by the unions. The executive director of the Employers’ Federation, Mr Jim Rowe, confirmed this, saying the unions’ 10-point plan had been unacceptable’ because it would have deliv-

ered across-the-board wage increases in an environment where some sectors could not afford any increase at all.

The federation’s director of advocacy, Mr Steve Marshall, later hammered home the message with the statement that in “a number of industries” unit labour costs must either remain stable or drop if New Zealand was to remain internationally competitive.

This suggests that in some negotiations no increase will be offered while in others increases will be granted only in return for concessions in, say, shift work and technology — trade-offs which would allow the cost of

the settlement to be offset in lower production costs. There will also be pressure to introduce regional rates either in an award or, if a nil increase is achieved at that level, through second-tier bargaining. This would augur badly for workers in the South Island and in the provinces because the economic contraction is biting deeper in these areas than in Auckland and Wellington. Underlying the strategy is a militancy born of hard times and obviously laid on the line yesterday because the secretary of the Federation of Labour, Mr Ken Douglas, emerged from the meeting to

predict “a much sharper industrial and political climate than we have seen in this country for a long long time.” He said the employers had "identified very clearly” not only that nil increases would be appropriate in some cases but also that they might refuse to renegotiate some awards.

That, he said, would be interpreted by the union movement as a deliberate thrust to smash the national-award system and would be resisted strenuously. Mr Douglas characterised union morale going into the round as "nervous” and the employer

attitude as "aggressive.” He attributed both moods to concern about the speed of change and the cost of adjusting to a changing economy. Those considerations, he said, had inspired the F.O.L. decision to seek some form of wage management this year, a course the federation would continue to pursue on a bipartite basis with the Government and the Labour Party. Mr Rodger yesterday did not rule out the possibility of an understanding being/ negotiated but neither did he encourage it.

He said he had always

rated the chances no higher than 50-50 and that the stakes were, perhaps “slightly lower now.”

More probable is that the F.O.L. will attempt to co-ordinate affiliated unions into an organised approach, much as it did last year.

If that is to be the outcome, this will be decided next week when the F.O.L. national council meets and when a special affiliates conference will be held in Wellington. Mr Douglas said the executive would develop a position to be put to those meetings.

He warned, however, that it would be difficult to sustain, as the employers were determined to prevent a wage path being established in the traditional trend-setting awards and flowing through to others on relativity links. “They will be doing their utmost to break that up,” he said. Mr Rowe confirmed that this year there would be "a great deal of reluctance” to allowing a settlement in one area to carry through to another where it had “no relevance.”

Should this be the pattern, the battles will not be confined to the first few negotiations, but will spread right through the round.