Australia’s Mining Troubles

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22467, 30 July 1938, Page 14

Australia’s Mining Troubles

The New South Wales Government is taking active measures to meet the threat of a general strike in the coalmining industry of the Commonwealth. It has promptly decided to send a member of the Cabinet as a prospective mediator. About this time last year a similar threat worried the same State. The prospect then of a State-wide strike was bad enough, but this year the outlook is much worse. The concessions previously granted them have led the miners to press even greater claims, the most important of which is a 30-hour week. It is certain that the employers will resist these, and it is equally certain that the miners are ready and prepared for a trial of strength. In the last few prosperous years they have built a huge fighting fund—some estimates put it as high as a credit of £2so,ooo—and they have been making earnest attempts to gain the support of other important sections of industrial unionism. From New Zealand miners, too, they have sought an assurance that importations of coal from this Dominion may not be available to relieve the shortage that would develop in the Cbmmonwealth if the strike threat was carried out. Nor is this New Zealand’s only cause for a keen and vital interest in the possibility of a general strike on the Australian coalfields. This country imports a bigger quantity of coal from Australia than most people realise. In fact, when the Mines Statement for 1937 came down in November last year the Minister, the Hon. P. C. Webb, had regretfully to admit that in proportion the growth of the importations was very much greater than the growth of production in this Dominion. It is only fair to say that the talk of a coal shortage which prevailed everywhere last winter has not been heard in 1938, a welcome indication of improved production in this country, for which Mr Webb deserves some credit. But the effect of a general strike in Australia must be greatly to intensify the demand for New Zealand-hewn coal. Not only would increased production be required to offset the loss of the 100,000 odd tons that comes from Australia each year, but our own mines would also be busier producing bunker coal. High handling costs at the Dominion ports have resulted in many companies baying coal for trading vessels in Australia, when it could easily be, and once was, procured at New Zealand ports, A strike would, temporarily at least, divert those shipping 'needs to New Zealand, and it is a question whether the mining industry in its present state is competent greatly to increase output at very short notice. Nor is that position necessarily the fault of the industry itself. The output of some mines is to a big extent affected by shipping and harbours influenced by the

vagaries of the weather. An occasional shortage of railway hoppers, too, has sometimes caused mines to be idle in a time of acute coal shortage. There is, moreover, as a heritage from less prosperous days, a shortage of experienced miners—and coalmining is essentially and always a skilled occupation. From these factors it is obvious that those interested in fuel supplies in the Dominion have reason to watch closely the threat of a strike in its nearest coal-producing neighbour. Another and less obvious cause for anxiety is the possibility that the miners’ present claims in Australia will set a precedent for New Zealand mining unionists to follow in the future. Costs in coal-getting in this country have mounted to a huge level as it is.