PUKEMIRO DISPUTE.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 235, 1 October 1920, Page 5

PUKEMIRO DISPUTE.

■ AN INTOLERABLE POSITION. PLAIN WORDS BY THE MAYOR. OWNERS SEVERELY CRITICISED. The whole community is famishing for coal; pretty well 100,000 of Auckland's population are deprived either of their ordinary cooking facilities or of their lighting, or both, for lack of it: the city utility service- are partially paralysed because there is no coal to keep all the machinery running; and despite every economy the position threatens to become worse before it improves. The only hopeful feature at present is the resumption of thfl Hufitly mines this week, and the knowledge that the miners at 1 he Taupiri pits are striving to save the situation from utter wreckage. Yet in the very vortex of the crisis we have the spectacle of the Pukemiro mine lying idle when it might be adding hundreds of tons daily to the all too scant supply for the city's requirements. Some caustic comment was made, this morning by the Mayor (MrJ. 11. Guuson) on this unpleasant pba»e of the coal famine, at a time when anything calculated to cause further embarrassment to the situation should be carefully avoided. After stating that nothing further could be. announced regarding the resumption of the tram service till after the Public Services Committee had met to-morrow, when they would consider the Council's stocks as a result of arrivals of coal during the week from the Waikato mines, Mr. Guiison remarked '"The Waikato coal is brown or lignite coal, and suitable for all the council's requirements. If the council could have got enough of it there would not have been any necessity to obtain any Newcastle coal, which is bituminous and suitable for gasrnaking. Had it not been for the stock of 3000 tons of Newcastle coal we had a month ago, however, the electric light service could not have been maintained to date, nor the tramway service up till a week ago. The shortage of coal can be directly, and as far as the city services are concerned, solely attributable to the cessation of work at the Waikato mines. The council holds no brief either for the miners or for the mineowners, and in its operations and judgment is neutral and impartial. It can. therefore, be expected to voice a fair and unprejudiced opinion. The strike of the miners was quite unjustified in view of the grave issues involved and the obvious results which would follow. But now that they have decided to return to work on the old terms, it appears also to mc that the action of the Pukemiro Company, in view of the critical conditions obtaining, is equally blameworthy. It was, in my opinion, neither the time nor the occasion to introduce at a conference a further question which should have been referred to another conference. On behalf therefore, of Ihe citizens from whom the coal is being withheld still by this action of tho Pukemiro mineowners, I protest just in the same way as we protested about the unwarranted action on the part of the miners." '•The community will not stand this delay in the settlement of a question of this' kind, which could and should be settled at a conference respecting the terms and conditions of work. This pretext should not have been used for a further hold up. The matter is far too serious to permit of further delay in the resumption of the mine, because of differences between the men and the ow-pers as to union membership. Such a difference should be settled in another way, and not by a prolonged stoppage, retarding still "further the resumption of an important city service at so critical a time. It is high time that the Government took a further hand in tho matter of the Waikato mining dispute. These great national interests have now passed the stace of mine owners on tho one side and coal miners on the other, and if these two bodies cannot come to an agreement on this point at issue, then the control of the mines on behalf of the community will have to be introduced at once. "1 do not refer to the nationalisation of the mines, but to the compulsory acceptance of conditions on the part of both the owners and the miners which would render impossible such delay in the output of coal as we are experiencing at present."