RAILWAY AGREEMENT.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 1 August 1928, Page 9

RAILWAY AGREEMENT.

TRIUMPH FOR COMMONBENSE

NEW PRINCIPLE ESTABLISHED (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, July 29. All parties to the railway agreement, which was reached -as the result of direct negotiations between the. railway company managers and the railwaymen’s unions on Friday, are congratulated by the Press for the sound com-mon-sense shown in accepting an agreement- which involves small temporary all-round reductions in the wages and salaries of all grades of workers and railway directors.

It is stated that there will he a reduction of between £2,000,000 and £3,000,000 annually on the total wages bill of £100,000,000. In' the great railway centres of Crewe and Derby the settlement is generally welcomed. The “Observer” says that the- agreement will take a distinctive place, in the history of industrial negotiations and settlement. It is regarded a® establishing a new principle—that if the workers are called on to accept an adverse modification of their conditions they are entitled to ask that everyone engaged in the enterprise shall come within the scope of the concessions LONDON, July 30.

Railwaymen in many centres have approved the reduction in wages agreed to at the conference-between the management and the employees. RIGHT POLICY PRESENTED. * AN ALL-ROUND SACRIFICE. ""RUGBY, July 30. Referring in a speech yesterday to the railway settlement which was reached on Friday, ~Mr. J. H. Thomas (Labour) said that he believed that the agreement presented the right policy. He recognised that proper care and development of the railway companies was as much the concern of the humblest platelayer as it was of the chairman of the boards of directors. For the first time, not only in railway history, but iii the history of industrial labour, -an agreement ‘setting out in black and white terms which included all round sacrifice had been reached