WAGE INCREASES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26544, 20 August 1947, Page 4

WAGE INCREASES

Demands by Public Servants Expected EFFECT OF COURT’S DECISION Industrial Correspondent. WELLINGTON, Aug. 19. It is expected that the Public Service Association will claim the full ten shillings a week increase for the great majority of civil servants to bring them into line with the pronouncement of the Court of Arbitration made last week. Although mo.st sections of the public service have had pay increases since the court’s previous pronouncement on March 17, 1945, it is claimed for the association that those increases were granted in terms of the 1945 pronouncement to bring the public service into line with the pay levels determined by that pronouncement. These increases were granted after a long investigation by a consultative committee which studied salary rates throughout the service. Post and Telegraph workers who are outside the Public Service Association, are in a similar position. Both groups are awaiting the Budget to discover what provision for public service salary increases may have been made by the Minister of Finance, Mr Nash.

The National Council of the New Zealand Federation of Labour is to give special consideration to the pronouncement of the court. A meeting of the council will be held shortly to review the pronouncement and to state the attitude of the federation to it. It seems likely that the council will express dissatisfaction with the court’s decision, but it is too early yet to know in what form it will do so. At a conference between the Minister of Labour, Mr McLagan, and the council at the time of the introduction of an amendment to the Economic Stabilisation Emergency Regulations permitting the court to make a pronouncement, it was expressly. understood that the council would review the decision of the court if it was considered unfavourable, and that it had the right to make recommendations to its affiliations in the matter. The council subsequently received authority from the annual conference of the federation to review the finding if it considered this necessary. Possible Price Increases One of the points principally in dispute among unions here is the declaration of the court that it has taken into account the likely increases in prices which will follow the reduction or withdrawal of subsidies on certain consumer goods and sea and rail freights. It is claimed that the court was not in a position -to make any accurate assessment of the likely effect on prices, and it is freely stated that the federation will claim the right to go gain to the court and ask for a further pronouncement. As the judgment stands, many thousands of workers will receive an actual increase of only five shillings a week or less. The trade union view expressed here, that prices should not increase on account of the wage increase, is one that is certainly not shared by the manufacturers, and apparently not by the court itself. *