Queensland Rail Strike Cost £20,000,000

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 April 1948, Page 5

Queensland Rail Strike Cost £20,000,000

(Rec. 10.55 a.m.) BRISBANE, This Day. The Queensland rail strike has cost the State £20,000,000, said the secretary of the Queensland Employers’ Federation,. Mr P. J. Seis. He believed it would take Queensland between six and 12 months to recover. The £20,000,000 cost included the loss of trade, the cost of emergency transport, wages lost, and loss of railway revenue. Experts estimate it will take the railwaymen about two years to make up in the marginal increases—which the Government offered them six weeks ago—the amount lost in wages.

Striking railwaymen in Brisbane and Ipswich yesterday accepted a recommendation by the disputes committee to return to work. Other meetings will be held during the next 24 hours, but a return to work is considered certain. It is . estimated that the railway strike has. cost at least £2,000,000 in loss of revenue, and that the men have lost £1,288,000 in wages. The leading Communist, E. J. Rowe, who was sentenced and fined for gross contempt of court on March 25, and who has been in hiding since then, is now in the Brisbane gaol. He was arrested at the Trades Hall today, when he appeared in a taxi, accompanied by two women, to address a mass meeting of the striking rail-

waymen. Rowe claimed that since his sentence he had travelled quite openly to Ipswich, had addressed meetings, had flown to Sydney for talks, and had returned to Brisbane without any attempt at secrecy, to address further meetings. Soon after- his appearance at the Trades Hall more than 20 police arrived and arrested him. Before this, Rowe told reporters: “I am now submitting to voluntary arrest because I think the original intention behind my arrest has failed. I could carry on evading the police, but I think it would serve no useful purpose.” . The police Rowe by a rear door to avoid a possible demonstration by unionists.