BRITISH COAL OUTPUT LAGS: NO HOURS AGREEMENT

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 September 1947, Page 7

BRITISH COAL OUTPUT LAGS: NO HOURS AGREEMENT

LONDON, Sept. 2*

With 15 weeks of the coal year still to go, British miners must raise 60,000,000 tons of coal if they are to reach the Government’s miinimum target of 200,000,000 tons by the end of the year. Last week they established the best output figures for three months, with 3,895,200 tofts but even this improved figure is well below the weekly . average required. They have not yet exceeded 4,000,000 tons in any one week, and they must secure 200,000 tons more than this during each of the next 15 weeks it they are to overtake the leeway lost during the earlier months of the year. The urgency of the coal shortage, however, tends to overshadow the fact that present British production is 90 per cent, of the output figures between 1935 and 1938, and that, by comparison with European production figures, the British miners are making a good showing. The prospects of the British miners reaching the Government’s minimum targets depend very largely upon their agreement to work extra hours. Negotiations between the National Union of Mineworkers and the National Coal Board on this subject are still proceeding, but there are now suggestions that the union is showing increasing reluctance to ask the men to work overtime.

The industrial correspondent of the News Chronicle suggests that the negotiations are in fact in danger of breaking down because the Cabinet has -now intervened with a request that the miners should revert to a full eight-hour day until the ' present emergency is overcome. Other correspondents suggest that Mr Arthur Horner, secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, is using last week’s improved production figures as an argument that the target can be reached without working extra hours. A meeting between representatives of the union and the Coal Board earlier this week adjourned without issuing any statement and did not fix a date for further meetings.