"AS YOU WERE"

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 107, 2 November 1923, Page 8

"AS YOU WERE"

MINING DISPUTE UNSETTLED

COMPLETE DEADLOCK.

;v'All afforts to effect a settlement of %he> mining trouble on the West Coast have proved fruitless, and apparently negotiations are at an end, for the present, at any rate. Hopes were expressed that the Citizens' Committee set up this •week to ccnfer further with the mineqwners' representatives would produce better results than the conference at ■which the Minister of Labour presided, but according to advice received by the local office of the Mineowners' Association the meeting has proved abortive. The secretary (ilr. T. O. Bishop) is returning from Westport after representing the association in the negotiations that have taken place within the last few days, and after addressing meetings of miners in some of the centres. In a telegram announcing the unsatisfactory reault..of. the discussion with the West Coast Citizens' Committee he states that the' employers' representatives did their ■utmost to bring about a settlement, but the terms held out by the miners' delegates were impossible. The mineowners declare that the offer they made as a basis of settlement was their last word, and as the terms were not acceptable to the miners the deadlock is as complete as ever it was. The next move will be awaited with interest. At the conference held at Reefton last ■week, the miners offered to enter into negotiations providing that the coal ownera granted an all-round- increase in pay of 15 per cent, to day wages men or guaranteed the weekly minimum wage laid down by the Arbitration Court for unskilled workers—£3 16s Id. The effect of the latter request would be to place the miners on a weekly wage basis, instead of a daily wage rate as at present, and it, would mean that each mined would receive at least £3 16s Id per week, irrespective of the amount of. coal, actually hewn by him. The proposal was not acceptable to the- coal owners, presumably because of the fact tnat employment is not always continuous in the mines, on account of cessations of work caused by falls of earth and other mishaps, and that it would establish a precedent for a weekly wage in other industries similarly affected, ,«uch, for instance, as work on the, water- ■ front, which depends upon the weather. ; COAL INDUSTRY SUFFERING. j Commenting upon the.situation on the West Coast, the assistant secretary of the New Zealand Employers' Federation (Mr. B. L.' Hammond) said that the trouble was not only affecting the companies and workers immediately concerned, but the coal industry gen- ' erally is suffering. The West Coast trouble had resulted in huge importa- - iions of Newcastle coal, and what was more important still, it had resulted in the New South Wales collieries securing contracts which in the ordinary course should and would have been placed in the Dominion. The effect was already manifest in the fact that notwithstanding the cessation of output at most of the West Coast mines, the Taupiri'Extended, mine at Huntly was working only three days a week, and were faced with' the possibility of the mine closing down entirely. Even with an immediate resumption of work on the "West Coast, it would.be difficult to secure a return to normal conditions for some time,, because the Dominion companies would have to again secure markets before full time employment could be,, given, at all mines. A continuance of the present situation could only benefit the Australian collieries at the. expense of the local coal industry and the employers and workers engaged in it.