STAY-DOWN STRIKE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 281, 27 November 1941, Page 6

STAY-DOWN STRIKE

NEWCASTLE MINERS HOLIDAY PAY ANOMALIES (0.C.) SYDNEY, November 25. Some 90 miners are still underground at Wallahra Colliery at Catherine Hill Bay, near Newcastle, where they began a stay-down strike at 7 a.m. last Thursday. Originally there were 120 of them, but some of the older men have had to come up. The Federal Attorney-General, Dr. Evatt, described it as "a mad and bad" strike, but up till to-day the miners have remained firm; in fact, yesterday three others mines were idle in sympathy with them. The dispute concerns holiday pay anomalies. The men claim that after 25 days' continuous work they are entitled to certain holiday privileges, but that the management always contrives to bring about a dispute] after 23 or 24 days. The immediate dispute is about their Christmas holiday pay. Up to date the strikers have been well off for food. Their wives have brought, that to them and the mine management has allowed it to be sent down. One young miner who celebrated his eighteenth birthday as a stay-down striker was presented with one slice of cake into which 18 matches had been stuck. Another, who was celebrating the first anniversary of his marriage, came up to the top to kiss his wife through the grille, but did not actually leave the mine.

The men have spent the time down below in community concerts, draughts, quoits a©d other timehonoured miners' pastimes. The management would not allow a radio set to be sent down to them last Saturday, so they were given race results over the underground telephone. The strikers are without electric light and have only their safety lamps. So far they have avoided being plunged into darkness by all grouping around one or two lamps at a time. On Sunday night Miners' Federation officials talked with some of the men at the top of the shaft and told them of the arrangements that had been made for arbitration in the dispute, but the men still refused to come out. When a federation check inspector went down the mine with a management official they accused him of spying on them and said they would keep him with them if he came down again. In one section of the mine which is 6 feet high the strikers have rigged up quite comfortable sleeping places, using pit props and hessian to make bunks and hammocks. Early next year several hundred miners who have not worked since the depression will get jobs again as a result of the compulsory retirement of miners at the ace of 60 under the pensions scheme. The pensions, which are financed Jointly by the men, the owners and the State Government, provide £2 a week, £1 for a wife and 8/6 for each child under 16.