Next wage round likely to be difficult

Press, 29 August 1986, Page 2

Next wage round likely to be difficult

By

GLENN HASZARD,

industrial reporter

The wage round which will start next month is likely to have a much wider spread of wage movements than in previous years, according to the director of the Canterbury Employers’ Association, Mr Colin Mclnnes. Mr Mclnnes said that meetings of employer groups in Canterbury would begin soon to discuss the approaching wage round. Unions have already begun filing their logs of claims and dates have been set for conciliation councils to meet.

The general feeling among employers in Canterbury was that “things are not that great,” said Mr Mclnnes.

The Canterbury Trades Council, which represents unions in Canterbury affiliated to the Federation of Labour, has placed advertisements warning members of unions that employers are mounting a campaign to scrap national awards.

“Your national award is your protection from employer flexibility’,” said the advertisement Mr Mclnnes said that he had a document from the O.E.C.D. in which trade union and employer advisers had told O.E.C.D. Governments (including New Zealand, which is a member of the 0.E.C.D.) that increased labour market flexibility could not by itself create economic growth but that inflexibility, or a failure of labour markets to adjust to structural change, could act as an obstacle to full employment

Mr Mclnnes said his message to the Trades Council would be that unionists should “get their heads out of the sand and look to flexibility to enable productivity and growth and thereby provide jobs for everyone in our community instead of taking the traditional conservative view of the labour market”

"If we have to operate under the existing award system the parties are

entitled to use it to its maximum flexibility. “Under the existing system, national awards are not sacrosanct There are provisions for other forms of bargaining,” said Mr Mclnnes.

It would be up to each employer or union group to decide how each award was to be negotiated, he said.

It was unlikely that employers in this wage round would blindly follow traditional relativities. The Trades Council in its advertisement said that if the national awards were scrapped employers would be able to force down wages and undermine working conditions. One trade union secretary said yesterday that a tactic that might be used by some employers would be. to refuse to negotiate an award or to make a very low final wage offer. The minimum provisions in the old award would continue in force, but if the unions wanted to get bigger wage increases in the face of a

refusal by the employers collectively to negotiate, they would have to go to each employer and try to negotiate “house” agreements which would supplement the basic award.

This would be fine for industries where there were a few big employers but it would be a hard road for unions such as the Clerical Workers, Shop Employees, and Engineers. Some might end up negotiating some agreements but smaller enterprises might continue to pay at the rates in the old award. Mr Mclnnes said that it would not be a question of forcing down wages but a question whether economic circumstances could sustain wage adjustments. If industrial confrontation were to result from the wage round it would be “a sad state of affairs.” “I would like to think that whatever came out of the negotiations would be what is sustainable and capable of maintaining present levels of employment,” Mr Mclnnes said.