EMERGENCY BILL

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 239, 6 July 1931, Page 9

EMERGENCY BILL

British Coal Industry HOURS AND WAGES Reason for Introduction Official Wireless. Rugby, July 8. The Government to-day introduced ix the House of Commons the emergency Coal Bill, which was read a first time. This step taken by the Government in pursuance of its announcement, following the failure of the miners and mine-owners to reach an agreement, that it would make proposals of its own. The main object of the Bill is to avert a return to a 7-hour day, which otherwise would have come into operation next Wednesday, and to prescribe' a 7J-hour day for 12 months or until the operation of the Geneva Conference decision, which prescribes a 7Jhour day, whichever is shorter. During the period the present wages must be continued. The Government desires the Bill to complete all its Parliamentary stages by Tuesday. The miners’ executive has recommended acceptance of the BUI to the delegate conference, which is now sitting in London. TANGLED NEGOTIATIONS The somewhat tangled negotiations between the mine-owners and the miners were referred to by the “New Statesman and Nation” recently. “The owners are still threatening to reduce wages in June, when hours come down to seven with the expiry of the Eight Hours. Act,” it stated. The miners, meanwhile, are demanding from the Government a Minimum Wage Bill guaranteeing that real wages shall be kept up to the pre-war standard. The realities of the position probably are that the miners «tre prepared temporarily to leave hours at 71 a day, if they can secure in return satisfactory terms about wages. The owners, however, are strongly opposed to a statutory minimum wage, and quite unwilling to grant voluntarily wages on the tcale demanded by the miners. The Government do not want to introduce legislation which they may be unable to pass into law, and which might result in the closing of many collieries. Probably the ultimate solution will be to leave hours unchanged (unless international agreement to reduce them can be secured at Geneva) and to grant the miners some further safeguards against wage-reduc-tions, possibly in the form of statutory wage-fixing machinery, without guaranteeing the maintenance of real wages at the pre-war level.”