strike really necessary?

Was Fiji civil servants' strike really necessary?

From a Suva correspondent

In the first week of November some 3,000 civil servants in Fiji went on strike.

It was the first such happening in the 100 years’ history of the service. The strike need not, and probably would not, have occurred if government leaders had been wiser and if union officials had been more observant of the accepted procedures for dealing with industrial grievances.

A demand by the union, the Fiji Public Servants Association, for higher wages was referred to a conciliator, Father Marion Ganey, the much-respected founder of the Credit Union move ment in Fiji.

Both sides took up an uncompromising stance from the begin ning. The PSA said that if conciliation failed, the association would not proceed to the customary next step of arbitration but would call a strike forthwith. A meeting of civil servants in Suva endorsed this decision, though with some opposition from Fijian members.

The government's representative at the conciliation announced that the cabinet had raised its version of the standard that now flies over all industrial negotiations in Fiji—the Prices and Incomes Board’s decree that no industry is to increase its annual wages or salaries bill by more than eight per cent.

Many civil servants had already received normal salary in crements in 1973. These increments represented about a five per cent increase. Therefore, the cabinet argued, any general increase resulting from the PSA claim could not exceed three per cent.

It was a curious argument, because not all civil servants re ceived increments. Some are on fixed salaries and some are at the top of the increment scale. Further, at least one other group of employees in Fiji, the bank officers, had been allowed, with out objection, to receive an eight per cent pay rise on top of incremental increases.

But the most devastating blow to the cabinet’s argument came when the secretary of the Public Servants Association, Mr Mahendra Chaudhry, quoted from the speech of the Minister for Commerce, Mr M. T. Khan, when he told parliament in June about the second phase of the prices and incomes policy.

Mr Khan explained that increments, like all other wage and salary increases, had been frozen in the first stage of the policy.

But he said quite explicitly, in the second stage they would be granted, and civil servants and other employees on contract would also be free to negotiate for further increases up to the eicht per cent limit.

Why Mr Kahn didn’t remind his cabinet colleagues of this when an attitude so directly opposed to his declaration was being so rigidly adopted is a cabinet mystery.

The strike began on a Friday and lasted over the weekend.

Government offices and most post offices and courts were closed but essential services continued. Fiji law requires 28 days’ notice before labour can be withdrawn from such services. Many civil servants turned up at their offices but did not work. Others carried on as usual.

An odd feature was that one or two top departmental officers —the people responsible for administering government policy— declared themselves to be among the strikers. An interesting question is—against whom were they striking?

A by-product of the strike was a threatened shortage of draught beer because the customs officers detailed to supervise excise collections refused to check out beer leaving the brewery.

The strike quickly developed political overtones. The Fiji Teachers’ Union, a predominantly Indian body with lawyer

politician Mr K. C. Ramrakha, the Opposition Whip, as president, jumped smartly on the bandwagon and declared a sympathy strike.

The parallel Fijian body, the Fijian Teachers’ Association, took a much more cautious stand. It said it would consult branches before making any decision. Pockets of Fiji Teachers’

Union members resisted the strike call, pointing out that pupils were on the eve of examinations, and com menting also that the FTU had been much less aggressive a few weeks previously, when the Prices and In comes Board had over-ruled cabinet approval for pay increases for assis tant teachers.

The Trades’ Union Congress, which seems to feel that it must match the militancy of the rival group headed by Mr Apisai Tora, also prepared to climb aboard the bandwagon, with a threat of a general strike in support of the civil servants’ demands.

The need for translating this threat into action was removed when groups of Fijian civil servants, while de claring support for the PSA action, insisted that the association should reverse its opposition to arbitration.

And that was the way it ended, with Suva lawyer Mr R. G. Kermode being appointed to head an arbitra tion tribunal with Professor Ashok Desai, of the University of the South Pacific, and Mr C. D. Aidney, presi dent of the Fiji Employers’ Consulta tive Association, as fellow-members.

Both sides agreed to the tribunal.

There was no talk of an arbitrary three per cent limit—or for that matter an eight per cent limit—and no talk of refusing to accept the arbitrator’s decision.

The alarms and excursions, the in convenience and the loss of the strike seemed more than ever unnecessary. • South Pacific Sugar Mills Ltd in its last year of business in Fiji as a subsidiary of the CSR Co Ltd, earned a net profit of $1,048,802. In the previous financial year the net profit was $387,271. The final result was achieved in spite of Hurricane Bebe of October, 1972, which was followed by flooding. The production target was 340,000 tons, but the final figure was 298,153 tons. The short fall in production meant that by the time it met quota obligations, the company did not have enough sugar over to take advantage of high world prices.