MAIN PURPOSES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26542, 18 August 1947, Page 4

MAIN PURPOSES

WAGE RATE INCREASE TWO REASONS GIVEN The principal purposes of the Arbitration Court’s pronouncement on wages are: 1. To offset cost-of-living increases since the last pronouncement on March 17, 1945; including those pending with the reduction of subsidies under this year’s and 2. To improve the relative position of those groups of workers who because of lack of bargaining power have lagged behind the wage standards of stronger groups. The judgment in the meantime affects only workers operating under awards or industrial agreements governed by the court, but it will follow that similar adjustments will be made in pay of all workers whether within or without the court’s scope. For practical purposes, a worker, to determine just how the decision will affect himself, may take the wage rate ruling for his job, including the cost of living bonuses, as at the March 17, 1945, pronouncement, and add to it threeence an hour or 10 shillings a week. If he has already had an increase in pay since March 17, 1945, then that will be measured against the threepence or 10 shillings. In the public service, fop instance, there have been varying wage increases since 1945. In the terms of the pronouncement public servants would get only the 10 shillings less the amount of the increases already obtained. The proposal that the equal-pay-for-equal work principle should be introduced, to give women the same wages as men where they perform the same tasks, has been rejected; so has the claim that adult women should receive 90 per cent, of the adult male unskilled rate. The pronouncement will grant only half or, in some cases less than half the amount claimed, and will bring no increase at all to many thousands of workers ,who have been fortunate enough to move ahead of the rest by negotiation, strike, or threat of strike over the last two years and a-half.