BRITISH CRISIS £l00m-a-year pay boost for miners

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33478, 8 March 1974, Page 11

BRITISH CRISIS £l00m-a-year pay boost for miners

(i.Z P'At-Reuter— Copyright)

LONDON, March 7,

Britain’s striking coalminers are expected to return to work next Monday, their earnings increased substantially by the £loom-a-year pay deal accepted by’ their leaders late last night. 1 he new deal gives underground coalface workers £45 a week in basic pay, £36 to other underground men, and £32 to surface workers. With additions for working "unsocial hours,” and some other extras, the 1 new pay structure will mean a minimum boost of between nearly £7 a week for surface men to more than £l6 for skilled miners on nightshift at the coalface.

After almost 12 hours! of talks, the executive of I the National Union of! Mine workers decided, by 25 votes to two, to. accept the offer made by the State-run National Coal Board, more than , double the sum offered to the miners by the former Conservative Prime Minister, Mr Edward Heath, under his wage-control policy. The miners’ union presi-l dent, Mr Joe Gormley, commented at the end of the marathon negotiating session: “I am very happy. We didn’t

I either increases in coal prices (of up to 20 ner cent or huge! ‘State subsidies to offset the! (inevitable deficit. The chair-! iman of the National Coal: Board (Mr Derek Ezra) commented: “There is going to be a cost, and it will have to be met somehow.” The later editions of the British press carried the news of the settlement, the masscirculation “Sun” printing a banner headline: “The Gold Miners.” The Right-wing “Daily Mail” report said: “The Labour Government got the miners back to work last night by lying down' before the steamroller that flattened the Heath Government, and by abandoning the battle against wage inflation.” The “Daily Telegraph” quoted a member of the miners’ union executive as saying: “If we had insisted that Mr Ezra should stand in Piccadilly Circus with his trousers down, he would have done it.”

I get the full thing. ' but we| |think it is a reasonable settle-! ! ment.” Union branches throughout ; Britain will meet on Friday i | to give fheir approval, but Mr Gormley is sure that the : majority of the 270,000 mem- I bers will be in favour of ac- I ceptance. Today, British industrial- ! ists are heaving sighs of re- < lief at the conclusion of -a < dispute which has helped to bring Britain to her lowest ebb economically since the ! Second World War, but they (are also counting the cost of the strike and the settlement.' The coalminers stopped ’ work on February 10, after a three-month overtime ban which had run down fuel stocks to the point where Mr Heath introduced power restrictions which cut most of industry back to a three-day week from the beginning of I the year. The estimated loss Ito the Coal Board alone is I £6sm. i The new deal will mean