"We are coming up to the General Wage Order Application. That's our big fixture for the year.

"We bad a new team, rubbed down and rarin' to go with a new plan. This time we were going for a minimum living wage for all workers. We wanted the whole team to be involved.

"Out with percentage play, we were going to spin it around. This way we'd get relief for the low income workers. They'd been taking a lot of knocks lately.

"Even Muldoon, he's the skipper of the other team, he'd said our strategy was sound.

"We'd worked out our moves, and we were running out onto the field when, all of a sudden, the captain of the other team comes over the public address system and says that he's calling the match off!

"He says that he's changed the rules because he didn't like the way that we were going to play. Maybe he just thought we were going to win.

"Anyway, says be doesn't think the ref would be able to handle the match, so he was talking over. He said he would talk it over with his team and from now on They would make up the scores and announce the results!

"I just about threw the liniment at him when he said we'd all get a few percent later, but there'd be no more footy.

"This is taking politics in sports Too far!!

"This time it is more than just a game, even a game of rugby. The stakes are my livelihood and my family's. I'm not going to take this with my boots off. We all need to get into it!"

That's how a Wellington Trades Council leaflet summed up the introduction of the Remuneration Act in August of this year. At the time, the FOL had its application for a minimum living wage order before the Arbitration Court. This Court has a history of acting on behalf of the employers and the Government when the crunch comes (see separate article) but it is not a direct arm of the Government. With a well prepared case, the unions know that they have at least a chance of getting some of what they are asking for.

So in stepped the Government. Muldoon seized prime television and radio time to announce that the General Wage Order Act (1977) would be scrapped. This meant that the FoL no longer had the ability to apply to the Arbitration Court for a general wage order. It also rendered any other applications the FoL might make (like the one for a minimum living wage) invalid, unless they related to a specific dispute. General wage orders might still be made from time to time, but solely at the discretion of the Government and without any provision for representation by the trade unions. There would be no appeal.

Muldoon also announced that the Executive (Cabinet plus the Govenor General) would take upon itself the right to scrap any agreements made between employers and unions that it doesn't like. So "free wage bargaining" was properly out the door.

Under the new scheme, the practice of taking days off in lieu of overtime, with the approval of the employer, could be stopped. Perhaps worst of all, a regulation could be passed making it a condition of employment that you are not a union member.

The Act that allows the Government to do all these things is the Remuneration Act. It was introduced into Parliament straight after Muldoon's unprecedented "simulcast" announcement. It is quite clear from the above that the Act strikes at the very basis of trade union rights.

Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win

For years, unions have been fighting for the right to bargain freely with employers over wages and conditions. Even the right to represent workers was not easily won. The living standard of workers today, their wages and conditions of employment, have not been handed to them on a platter. They have been fought for, every step of the way.

Many commentators (the latest, as we go to press, being Catholic bishops) have argued that the unions, employers and the Government should find a way of sitting down together and working page break out a way of resolving differences without resorting to industrial strife. What they don't seem to realise is that the whole weight of history shows that employers do everything they can to increase profits, and workers benefit from the fruits of the products they make only inasmuch as they struggle for those fruits. That's the way the system works, whether we like it or not. When the going gets tough for the employers, it's the workers who suffer.

Profits in New Zealand are high (for the monopolies, that is) yet living standards are steadily deteriorating. Unemployment is soaring, while prices continue to climb. Electricity, to take just one example, is up 300% since 1975. It's not the wealthy who suffer. They are well insulated by the rising cost of living. It's the poor: the low paid workers, beneficiaries and people trying to raise a family on the type of wages most workers are paid these days.

The Government and the employers aren't going to look after the hard hit of their own accord. It isn't in their interests. They have an efficient propaganda machine in the mass media which spouts rubbish about the "national interest". Times are hard, says the Government, and no-one affected by the economic crisis can doubt it. Therefore, argues the Government, you all have to pull in your belts. So many small businesses, workers and others who have been cutting new notches in their belts for a while now, get out their knives and cut another notch. And meanwhile, "restructuring," which will put the economy on a new footing, proceeds apace.