COST OF STRIKES

Evening Star, Issue 18057, 26 August 1922, Page 8

COST OF STRIKES

AUSTRALIAN FIGURES. WORKERS LOSE £757,028. Tho number of industrial disputes involving a stoppage of work in Australia during 1921 was 624. The number of workpeople directly apd indirectlv affected was 165,101; the number of working days lost was 956,617, ami tho total estimated loss in wages was £757,028. While the number of disputes recorded was the largest for any year since the information has been collected, tho effect in loss of working days and wages has been greatly exceeded iu some years. In 1919 the loss in wages amounted to £3,951,936, and in 1920 to £1,223,716. The report of tho Labor and- Industrial branch of the Bureau of Census and Statistics for 1921 shows also that, whereas tho average nominal hours of labor constituting a full week's work was, for the Commonwealth, 48.92 in 1314. at the end of 1921 the average had been reduced to 46.23. As far as food, groceries, clothing, and miscellaneous expenditure are concerned, the “peak” of nriccs was reached in tho third quarter of 1920; • f.im-c that period there has been a substantial reduction in the cost of those, commodities, according In tho report. House rent, on the other hand, has continued to increase. Tho average m-nm-al weekly rate of wage pavable (a adult male .workers rose from 89s ICd in 1920 to 94s 6d in 1921. In consequence of the decrease, in (be cost, uf i ominoclitics during the same period,' tho effective, wage increased, and was for 1921 higher than for any year since 1901, the earliest period for'which information is given. ;