Pit bosses vote to work

Press, 26 October 1984, Page 8

Pit bosses vote to work

NZPA-Reuter London leaders of Britain’s 130,000 striking miners will meet State Coal Board employers today in a new bid to end their seven-month dispute after a total pit shut-down was averted yesterday. Leaders of .the pit supervisors union, N.A.C.0.D.5., voted unanimously yesterday to call off a walk-out today by their members. A strike would have shut down all coalfields as about one quarter of the country’s 174 pits still being worked by strike-breaking miners Icoulld not have operated

without supervisors. The leader of the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers, Mr James O’Connor, said the Coal Board had met the supervisors’ requests. He was sure the agreement reached with his union could provide a basis for settling the whole dispute, sparked by plans for pit closings and job cuts. One part of the accord was to set up an independent review body to adjudicate on major issues in the mining industry — including pit closings, said Mr O’Con-

nor. The president of the National Union of Mine Workers, Mr Arthur Scargill, said, however, that he was pessimistic about today’s talks in spite of having seen the settlement deal struck by N.A.C.O.D.S. Mr Scargill refuses to budge from his demand that the Coal Board abandon all plans to close pits it judges to be uneconomic. He will enter the talks aware that his union’s assets may be seized in a High Court move, following the expiry at midnight of a deadline to pay a $532,000

fine for contempt of court. The fine was imposed when the union refused to heed a court decision, taken on an action brought by two non-striking miners, that the strike was not official. The 180,000-member union’s last published accounts for 1983 showed assets of more than £4 million, in its general fund. Large transfers are thought to have been made to individual areas in the form of strike-related hardship money, so the amount available for sequestration is not yet clear.