Featherbedding deplored

Press, 6 May 1988, Page 6

Featherbedding deplored

PA Wellington The Labour Relations Act needs to be changed to get rid of featherbedding practices and low productivity, the director of the Employers’ Federation, Mr Dick Jessup, says. Mr Jessup told the Tawa Lions Club yesterday that employers wanted union deregulation similar to the deregulation that had taken place in the financial markets to further free up the economy. He accused some unions involved in the Nissan dispute of not acting in their members' interests but of holding the plant to ransom in the interests of their own self-

preservation and for ideological reasons. He gave the example of nine cafeteria workers, who, he said, had voted for the Nissan way agreement but been told by their union they could not go along with it. “Had they done so, they would have received a 12 per cent salary increase last year ... (they) ended up with an 8.5 per cent increase and the loss of nearly three months backpay,” said Mr Jessup. He also warned that if Wellington dockworkers were not careful, they would lose work in a dispute over working conditions at the city’s dry dock.