F.O.L. strategy meeting on wages

Press, 3 September 1986, Page 3

F.O.L. strategy meeting on wages

By

PATRICIA HERBERT

in Wellington The Federation of Labour will hold a special affiliates’ conference in Wellington today to determine union strategy for this year’s wage round. Formal negotiations will begin on September 15 when the metal trades award goes into conciliation but the environment in which these talks will take place is still unknown. As a reflection of this uncertainty, even now only one unioi. has lodged a specific wage claim. The rest are refraining from putting a figure on their demands until they know the outcome of the F.O.L.’s continuing efforts to make a wage deal with the Government. The secretary of the F.0.L., Mr Ken Douglas, has been leading this push and with the F.O.L. president, Mr Jim Knox, and representatives of the State unions called on the Minister of Labour, Mr Rodger, this week to reopen discussions. Mr Rodger responded by convening a meeting of the parties in his Beehive office on Monday. It was attended on the employer side by the director-gen-eral of the Employers’ Federation, Mr Jim Rowe, and by the federation’s director of advocacy, Mr Steve Marshall. An Associate Minister of Finance, Mr Prebble, also attended, indicating perhaps increased Government interest in a managed approach. In the formal tripartite wage talks which ended last month, the Government took a neutral position while the unions and the employers tried to thrash out an agreement. When they failed, Mr Rodger seemed relaxed about the prospect of another experiment with free wage-bargaining but he may have been indulging in brinkmanship. Certainly for Labour there are political costs in industrial disruption, particularly in the run-up ito a General Election. Alto, the speed with which the "Douglas programme” has been implemented has created dislocations in the economy and confusion about future trends which the October tax changes can only aggravate. In these circumstances, the Government’s thinking may well be that an agreed wage round would' provide a vital element ofpredictability in an otherwise uncertain climate. ■■

Monday’s meeting" lasted little more than an" hour but further meetings 15 are expected.

Among the sorts of deals being discussed is that the Government declare a percentage-in-crease figure which the parties to individual awards can buy into provided they agree that this is the settlement and that they cannot bargain on conditions. If they choose not to accept it, they will be free to settle where they will but must in the process accept all the risks of free negotiation. Such a formula would meet the employers’ requirement that there must be flexibility according to ability to pay. Mr Marshall has said that in a number of industries unit labour costs must either remain stable or drop if New Zealand is to remain internationally competitive. He has talked of “nil increases.” His statements herald a new employer toughness, a militancy that has alarmed Mr Douglas into predicting an industrial dust-up this year of proportions New Zealand has not seen “for a long, long time.” For the F.0.L., this would be disastrous not only to its campaign to protect the national award system but also to its desire to have Labour returned to office next year. There is also an uncomfortable awareness in union circles that their negotiating strength must be undermined by the recent, and they say, orchestrated, spate of highly publicised mass redundancies and by rising unemployment and business failure. It was this realisation that prompted the F.O.L. to come back to the table; the issue now is the price it will pay for a wage agreement. Again the employers would appear to have the whip-hand as they are less interested in a central wage deal than the unions so will presumably strike one only if the terms are attractive.- < Either way, time is running out. Not only does the round start in less than two weeks but before that, on September 11, employer assessors and advocates will meet in Wellington to discuss tactics and their attitude is that if an understanding is to be reached, it must be reached before that meeting. Against these constraints, figures must obviously have been raised on Monday but they remain confidential at this stage. It is known, however, that a significant gap still separates the parties although both are believed to be talking about 10 per cent.