"We refuse to negotiate with a pistol at our heads", is one of those familiar bromides of industrial relations everywhere. But the reference was more than figurative last January when, during the third day of a public arbitration in Suva between the Airport, Hotel and Catering Workers' Union, and Qantas Airways, the unionists present, James Anthony and Apisai Tora, demanded their Qantas opponents be immediately searched for pistols and revolvers.

This incident was a culmination of previous charges about Qantas officials threatening Fijian employees with pistols at Nandi Airport during a three week strike last October. Whatever the murky truth, the allegations in themselves are indicative of the still unfortunately immature state of industrial relations within the colony.

While there has been a considerable increase since 1960 in both registered unions and union membership, there is neither compulsory registration for workers nor compulsory arbitration and concilation procedures. At present there are some twenty effective unions with a total membership of 15,000. Two thirds of this membership is concentrated in four major unions—The Public Employees, The Dockworkers and Seamen, The Mine-workers and the Sugar and General Workers, which are affiliated to the Fiji Traders Union Congress.

In recent years there has been a steady increase in collective bargaining and other organised methods of wage fixing. Disputes in the sugar industry, if not settled through negotiations, ore taken to the Fiji Sugar Board for conciliation.

However the great majority of manual workers are outside any formal union structure, having their basic wages and conditions settled either by collective agreements or by orders of statutory wages Councils (where worker representation is always in a minority) covering fields such as transport, construction, and catering.

Now at a higher level, under a fledgling system, a Minister for Labour, Ratu Edward Cakobau, assisted by a Commissioner, Mr. Ken Harrap, acts as a conciliator in disputes and also as civil service head of the Labour Department.