NZ team gets cold shoulder in Tonga

Ross Wilson listens to strikers' representatives yesterday. He and two other New Zealanders want to help resolve the public service pay row, but the strikers are refusing to take part in the arbitration. Picture / Kenny Rodger

NUKU'ALOFA - A New Zealand team of negotiators who hoped to help resolve a public service strike in Tonga have been told their services are not wanted.

More than 1000 Tongan civil servants have been on strike for five weeks.

Retired Employment Court Judge Tom Goddard, Victoria University law expert Andrew Ladley and Council of Trade Unions president Ross Wilson were sent to Nuku'alofa by the New Zealand Government at the request of the Tongan Government.

They arrived in the kingdom's capital on an early-morning flight yesterday expecting to meet representatives of the Government and the strikers to establish terms of reference for mediation in about 10 days.

However, the chairman of the strike interim committee, Finau Tutone, told the Herald his people were no longer prepared to go along with the arbitration process.

Mr Tutone said the Tongan Government had not agreed to their condition that workers be allowed to return to work on the salary rates they were seeking while mediation proceeded.

He said they had wanted an answer from the Government as early as Sunday, but were told only on Wednesday night that that would not be possible.

"The Government played tactics ... We did not have time to inform the New Zealand High Commission."

Mr Tutone said there was a glimmer of hope that the impasse could be resolved as a tearful Princess Pilolevu had fronted up at the daily rally of strikers on Wednesday to say she would try to get the Cabinet to change its mind.

Judge Goddard told the Herald things were at a delicate stage and he could not comment further. "The process belongs to the parties."

The New Zealand High Commissioner to Tonga, Dr Michael McBryde, could not be reached for comment last night but earlier told the Herald the issues the parties needed to resolve would hopefully be clarified through mediation.

Dr McBryde also said the New Zealand Government had insisted that he provide written agreement from both sides that they were prepared to participate in mediation.

He said it was hard to predict what would happen next, as such industrial action was a first for the country.

When asked if things could turn violent, he said Tonga had the advantage of being a homogeneous society that was overwhelmingly Polynesian and without ethnic or tribal divisions, or rivalries.

"And there is the great social glue which is Christianity.

At every [strike] gathering there are lots of prayers, hymns and messages of peace."