Trade winds blow but

fiji talanoa

With Guest Columnist

L. G. Usher, In

Sue Wendt's Absence

In Britain

was a time when Fiji had a clearly-defined tourist season.

This was that part of the year—from March to October—when the trade winds blow and the weather strikes a delightfully balmy balance between sticky heat and freezing cold. In these months, Australian and New Zealand visitors came to Fiji to escape the rigours of their winter.

They still do, but with them now are Americans on summer vacation, and a variety of other international visitors. And the “season” has dis appeared, because the whole lot now happily spread their visits over the hot months too, so that throughout the year hotel occupancy rates stay up, together with the high spirits of duty-free dealers, the rate of build ing of new hotels, and the spiralling cost of living.

TPHE Government’s main weapon against rising living costs is a price control committee, drawn mainly from the civil service. They have not heard of King Canute, who demon strated the limits of his power by showing his courtiers that even a king could not control the tides by decree.

One price control order, for in stance, fixed the price of flour and sharps (the last product of the wheat milling process, before the white flour is reached) at the then ruling rate.

So importers pointed to overseas price rises and said politely that they would not order any more flour or sharps because they would be losing money if they had to sell in Fiji at the prices fixed.

A further order quietly lifted the permitted price and things returned to normal—normal meaning in Fiji these days, as elsewhere, that house holders’ bills continued to go up.

Some sections of the community have been able to do something about this. Reports of wage negotiations between unions and employers in recent weeks have told one after the other of pay increases round the

20-25 per cent, mark, though Fiji’s current Development Plan is based on an annual growth of the national wages bill by about a third of this.

For the coconut producer (meaning in the main the Fijian villager with few other sources of income) there are no employers to bargain with in the knowledge that a bit more on wages can be passed on to the customer (thereby taking away a good deal of the benefit of the higher wages, but who wants to think about

that, Jack?)

Incomes from copra and coconuts have dwindled to vanishing point as the local price has drifted steadily

Trade winds blow but storm clouds gather

downwards with each announcement by the Coconut Board, and on its downward path has passed below the cost of copra production. The board’s predictions of future trends grow gloomier month by month. Fijian growers have been given some pre sent relief at the expense of future advantage.

The compulsory levy of $2O a ton which is credited to growers’ ac counts with the Fiijan Development Fund Board has been reduced to $5.

The board decided not to stop the levy (cess, is the local word) altogether because that would mean that the machinery would run right down and it might be hard to start it up again.

Past cess accumulations in the fund have helped many Fijians to build houses, buy farm equipment, pay school fees and become share holders in public and private com panies. But you can’t put aside savings from a non-existent income.

TI/fR DON AIDNEY, chairman of the Copra Board, is also president 0 f the Fiji Employers’ Consultative Association, and at the association’s annual meeting he talked of the good and the bad in Fiji’s prospects. On the good side he put the “remarkable job’’ done by the politicians, He said they had evolved a gener ally accepted pattern of racial and political balance—a pattern that is working. They had introduced a popu |ar measure of inter-racial govern ment anc j h ac j achieved, through sincerity and tolerance, success that few had really dared to hope for.

But in the economic field Mr

Aidney saw storm signs—the sort of hurricane warnings old-timers used to read in the look of the sea, or the feel of the wind or the colour of the sky, and then hastened to batten up. “It is idle to talk of free and universal education unless that educa tion trains our youth in the skills that will enable them to find decent em ployment,” he said.

“It is naive to think that tourism will be the long-term answer to our economic development. It is mis chievous to propose shorter working hours and extravagant wages for a tenth of our people when the rest have to try to seek a subsistence living from primary crops whose value can barely be maintained. It is shocking to ignore the growing cess pools of crime, vice and degradation that are forming in our cities with the swelling influx of rural people hoping for a better deal.

“We have been lucky. Tourism has given us a boost to sustain our economy while we work out our

jture. It will not in Fiji—nor has anywhere else in the world—remain le basis of our economy. This can ;st only on two factors, the worth f our land and the things it pro uces, and the worth of our people r ho work this land.” kTOT ALL recent trade union activities have been concerned with r age negotiations. At the mining entre at Vatukoula, for instance, ,300 employees of the Emperor Gold lining Company stopped work for ine days in protest against the trans -5r of a watchman from the company’s ort installations at Vatia Point to atukoula itself.

At the end of the nine days, during 'hich the Minister of Labour, Mr )nati Mavoa, took a hand in settle lent negotiations, the man in ques on went back to Vatia Point for a ay, and then settled down quietly t Vatukoula, leaving the rest of Fiji rendering what on earth all the fuss ad been about. The secretary of the iji Dockworkers’ Union, Mr Taniela ’eitata, commented that the strike ad been “for no reason".

But he was basking in a rosy glow f satisfaction, because his union had oncluded an agreement with ship ing companies with what the “Fiji imes” called “unprecedented speed nd amicability”. This was in sharp ontrast to happenings last year, rhen a protracted national docks nd shipping strike brought near isaster to Fiji’s economy.

On industrial relations, in the ddress already quoted from, Mr Don Jdney had some forthright things to ay to employers. They had only lemselves to blame if industrial rela ons deteriorated through lack of iscipline and through disregard of le law, he said.

Most industrial agreements set out a mutually agreed grievance pro cedure. So, to control the industrial situation, “all we have to do,’’ he said “is to observe the conditions of the agreements that we have signed with the various trade unions. All we have to do is to acknowledge that a strike or a walkout without resort to the agreed channels of negotiation is a clear breach of contract and until the terms of that contract have been re stored there can be no negotiation”.

Mr Aidney claimed that many of Fiji’s industrial disputes were “frankly racialist” and directed against ex patriates. But he blamed some over seas firms who were in Fiji for short term contracts for “taking the easy way out of buying peace today and to hell with tomorrow and everyone else”.

Many, he said, were accustomed to the relatively sophisticated in dustrial negotiation procedure and the discipline of labour movements of other countries, and they naively ex pected similar standards in Fiji. “Un derstandably, they are often regarded by our trade unions as disorganised, gutless and easy targets,” Mr Aidney said. \ GROUP, not of employers but protesters, from Australia has been providing some light relief to the Fiji scene. Led by Mr Gordon Mutch, they turned up at Nadi Airport all dressed up as parachutists ready to leap into the waters of Mururoa Atoll to discourage the French Gov ernment from continuing its nuclear tests in the area. But Mururoa is 2,800 miles from Nadi so the group talked lightly of chartering a DCS in Fiji or New Zealand to cover this distance.

They announced that they would parachute into Suva harbour as a preliminary, but this performance was on-again off-again for a couple of weeks because they had left the necessary licences back in Australia.

Eventually, two jumps were made from a light aircraft supplied by Fiji Air Services. But the series came to an end when the company found difficulty in collecting the charter fee for the flights already made.

The same trouble arose over the hire of power boats from Tradewinds Marina. These boats were used to visit reefs near Suva to collect sea weed to put under a Geiger counter to detect radioactivity that might possibly have drifted from Mururoa.

The various moves of the group were filmed by members of the party.

Scenes shot included some of para chutists jumping from aircraft, but with the planes still on the ground.

When the party returned to Aus tralia, having got no closer to Mururoa than Suva, Tradewinds Marina reported that a $20.00 cheque proffered in part-payment of a debt of $53.00 had been returned by the bank.

There is no evidence that any of this had any influence on deterring President Pompidou from continuing nuclear testing in the Pacific.

A peace sign from "Greenpeace IV" protester Mr Lindsay Matthews after he para chuted safely into Suva Harbour.

"Greenpeace IV" protester Mr Lindsay Matthews parachutes into Suva Harbour.