THE GREY VALLEY COLLIERY DISPUTE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 184, 6 August 1890, Page 2

THE GREY VALLEY COLLIERY DISPUTE.

(To the Editor.)

Sib,—l have just received tbo enclosed slip from Brunnerton, and as you have published some details in regard to the matter perhaps you will kindly publish this in the Star so the public may see the miners' version of the question. I may state the miners on the West Coast get two shillings and tenpence per ton "gross weight" for bowing and rilling the coal into skips, but by the time this coal reaches Wellington the consumer has to pay 32a to 35* por ton for it (vide leading article " Westport News," 30th June, 1890.) Yet in the face of that enormous difference, it is on the minor's piok alone they come, to suffer a reduction to the tune of 20 per oent. Surely the public will say the miners offered fairly enough when they agreed to stand a reduction of twopence por ton if the Railway and the Union Steamship Company would take the same reduction off their freights, thus sharing the 20 per cent; reduction equally. But no, sir, the Railway aud the Union Steamship Company are great monopolies, their pockets mustn't be touched. The collier is only a poor ignorant man ; let's rob him, he has no friends.—l am, etc., Thomas Skellon.

Secretary Miners' Union, Huntly. [The printed slip enclosed by our correspondent is a letter from the General Secretary of A.M.L.A., which states: "The coal hewers now employed number only 194 out of a total of 450 persons engaged at the mines. The gross average weekly earning* of these 194 coal hewers since the 10th of March has been £540. A simple sum in division will show that they have been earning £2 16s per week at a time which i. admitted to have been the busiest time for years ; the numbers of days worked since the period of assumed loss having reached the nigh average of eleven per fortnight; whereas the average numberof dayswoiked Inst year was little over seven days per fortnight. Even admitting that a f_w of the miners are daily absent) from work through sicknessorothercauses, the average earnings cannot be raised to £3 per week. Can this be termed an excessive wage during harvest time ? But the average 'earnings throughout the year exceed little, if anything, over two pounds per week. It is, from this really email pay the Company shouts "hands up" and demands a dividend. Twenty per cent., too, is tho least they call for, and because the miners do not at once admit that an average wage of £2 per week is a fair basis to arbitrate for a reduction on, the mines are closed and the men locked out."

Telophone, 34.