The Official Employers' View

The official employers' line was put by Max Bradford of the Employers' Federation, who argued that three alternatives faced New Zealand: adjust to a downturning economy with lower incomes, accept high levels of unemployment, increase productivity through better management and use of resources. It's an old trick to pose two unsavoury options so that your third appears more palatable, but even Bradford wasn't prepared to push it too hard. Even a 20% increase in productivity would not necessarily create more jobs, he told us, because a lot of our industries are under-utilising their machinery.

Nevertheless, the Employers' Federation was against unemployment because it meant a permanent loss of skills to the economy, cause I industrial unrest and a loss of potential and outlook for the individual. Some benefit could come from retraining, subsidised schemes, overseas loans and moderation of wage and salary demands. "No group." he suggested, "can have a greater share of the cake than the economy can sustain".