Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 6. April 2 1979

Free in Theory

Free in Theory

The Government is very fond of telling people these days about how carefully it has guaranteed the rights of free wage bargaining. The threat to implement regulations that will compulsorily withdraw the new wage agreement between maritime engineers and their employers puts this in a different light.

Labour Minister Jim Bolger said: "I believe the agreement was freely entered into between the parties and signed by them. I don't believe that's in dispute". You'd have to go a long way to find a better definition of free wage bargaining. Yet now that Bolger thinks threatens the Government's policies comes along, he reveals his true colours. Free wage bargaining, as the Government sees it, is all right so long as it doesn't favour the workers too much.