Attempt to erode incomes—P.S.A.

Press, 24 January 1987, Page 3

Attempt to erode incomes—P.S.A.

The Employers’ Federation could be “cynically using” the dispute between the Wool Testing Authority and some of its staff as a device to erode workers’ incomes, according to the president of the Public Service Association, Mr Colin Hicks. He was speaking at a press conference in Christchurch yesterday before joining the president of the Federation of Labour, Mr Jim Knox, to visit the striking staff picketing the authority’s laboratories. Both Mr Hicks and Mr Knox suspect that the Employers’ Federation is encouraging the authority to use the long-running dispute as a test case for the contestability provisions in the new Labour Relations Bill now before Parliament.

By doing this Mr Hicks said the federation had the capacity to “decimate its own organisation.” “Far more importantly, they are putting a lot of people through misery,”

he said. “These people are not only in the picket lines, but include other authority employees under considerable pressure in their work.

“I suspect the employers are doing this for their own political ends.”

Authority staff have been picketing laboratories in Christchurch and Napier since early last

month after a breakdown in mediation talks on a pay dispute. The dispute was sparked by the authority’s refusal to pass on a 4 per cent catch-up awarded to State workers for 1985-86.

The authority subsequently insisted that workers swap over from the P.S.A. to the Woollen Workers’ Union, a move opposed by both the State and private sector unions.

Mr Knox said he would determine what support the picket line required from the F.O.L. and report to an executive meeting on Tuesday. The F.O.L. has already supported a ban on the movement of materials to and from the authority laboratories.

He said the authority was breaking an agreement it signed in 1982 that recognised the P.S.A. as representing authority employees.

“The Woollen Workers’ Union has made it clear they do not want to be used by the employers in this way and have supported the P.S.A. position,” he said.

The claim that the Employers’ Federation could be using the dispute as a test case for contestability was denied by the assistant general manager of the authority in Napier, Mr Gordon Brown, yesterday.

“We are merely responding to the wishes

of our staff,” he said. “Our staff voted by secret ballot almost unanimously earlier this month to join the Woollen Workers’ Union.

“We have offered to have the same ballot carried out again but the F.O.L. has refused to go along with this.” The authority staff would have access to the Arbitration Court by joining the union, Mr Brown said.

“As a quango operating as a commercial organisation, we are not recognised by the State Services Commission. This means that if the staff want to take a dispute to court they have no access to arbitration while they belong to the P.S.A.

“The Woollen Workers’ Union has said it does not want the staff to become part of its union so as to keep on the side of the F.O.L. There is no commercial reason why we want the staff to belong to the union.”

Since the 1982 agreement to recognise the P.S.A. membership of the staff the union had changed its rules which made this agreement invalid, Mr Brown said. “The 4 per cent was something set by the P.S.A. across the board and it was not applicable to our situation. We are a commercial organisation and stand or fall by our profitability.”