STRIKES IN ENGLAND. SHIPBUILDERS AND ENGINEERS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 46, 24 February 1908, Page 7

STRIKES IN ENGLAND. SHIPBUILDERS AND ENGINEERS.

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE'S EFFORTS AT SETTLEMENT. Bj Telcxrsph.— Frees Assooiation.— Cop-right. LONDON, 22nd February. The efforts which are being mado by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd-Geoige, President of the Board of Trade, to effect a settlement of the engineers' dispute are progressing. It now transpires that the shipbuilding emplojers decided, owing tb distress arising from depression in trade, to continue to employ, as circumstances permit, men belonging to trades in which there is no dispute. Henco the lock-out notices to those workers who have accepted a modified reduction have been withdrawn, but the employeis insist upon shipwrights who are on strike accepting the Clyde rate of pay. The strikers reply that this is equivalent to a reduction ot three shillings per week, and they are determined not to resume work. 'As a peacemaker in connection, with industrial troubles the President of the Board of Trade has now something' of a reputation. His tactful work in regard to the threatened railway strike, and, later, that threatened by the cotton operatives, gives some ground for hofio that he will be able to smoothe awny present difficulties. He recently invited Sir Andrew Noble, Chairman of Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth and Company, Ltd., to confer with him. Eighteen thousand persons employed in the engineering shops accepted the employers' modified reduction of a shilling a week, but of twelve thousand member. 1 , of the Amalgamated Society of Engineeis and tho Steam Enginemakers and Machine Workers' Societies 6140 voted for a strike and 1307 agßin^t.