CONTRACTS FOR CRUISERS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 24, 29 January 1912, Page 7

CONTRACTS FOR CRUISERS.

THAMES IRONWORKS EMPLOYEES' DECISION. By Telegraph — rrem Association.— CopyrigUk (Received January 29, 9 a.m.) LONDON, 28th January. Mr. J. W. Hills, Unionist M.P. for Durham, asked a meeting of employees at the Thames Ironworks to sacrifice half of the November, advance in wages in order that the company may secure the contract for building two cruisers for the British Navy- Twelve hundred assented to this. There were only ten dissentients. The meeting was palled without reference to the trade unions. [The Thames Ironworks waa recently put in 'the handtt of a, Receiver. Its tender for the building of the two cruisers was £312,000 each, compared with £269,000, the tender by another firm. At the beginning of the year the Admiralty announced that it had entered into negotiations with a- Northern shipbuilding firm for the construction on the Thames of two protected cruisers and their engines, the cost of wages -representing approximately that for the construction of a battleship. The final decision was dependent on an arrangement being come to between the Northern firm and the Thames workmen. The contract was not to be accepted except on the basis that the same hours should be worked as are worked by the men of other competitive firms* namely, a fiftythree instead of a forty-eight hour week. This question of hours has raised much discussion, and caused considerable adverse criticism by labour leaders. On New Year's Day a number of Labour and Unionist members of the House of Commons attended a Trafalgarsquare demonstration. Mr. J. W. Hills, mentioned in the cable above, upon an invalid couch, was hoisted, to the plinth j of the Nelson column; He protested against a Northern firm controlling the Thames Ironworks and the men being required to abandon th© shorter "hours which they had enjoyed for fifteen years.]