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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 11. June 2 1981
Blaming the FoL
Blaming the FoL
For obvious reasons the FoL and CSU (Combined State Unions) refused to agree to such an 'open ended' proposal. In his usual 'good form' the PM has retaliated by blaming the problems caused by the failure to initiate tax reform on the FoL. In his attempt to pass the buck, he threatened that
- If the unions do not accept the trade-off principle there will be no tax cuts in the 1981 budget.
- There will be no continuation of the wage policy talks at least not until after a long pause.
- That the failure of this proposal will have serious and wide-spread economic effects. And, of course, the 'unions' will be totally responsible for this.
More recently the PM has threatened wage controls specifically related to whether or not the Unions accept the Government's proposal for a 9% wage increase for this award round. To go back, the August agreement between the Government, employers and FoL comprised three mair elements:
- The repeal of the Remuneration Act
- A cost of living hearing
- Reforms to the wages system.
So while the first two elements have been completed there remains no progress in the third area. Until the intrusion of the wage/tax issue, debate on the wage system had been very general. No specific proposals had been made, and no papers tabled other than Government papers outlining the difficulties with the present system and analysing the 1979/80 award round.
Now it appears likely that the wage policy discussions will 'break down'.