The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. MONDAY, JUNE 9, 1930. THE AUSTRALIAN COAL DISPUTE.

Hokitika Guardian, 9 June 1930, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. MONDAY, JUNE 9, 1930. THE AUSTRALIAN COAL DISPUTE.

More than once, during the fifteen weary,' profitless months that the dispute in the northern colliery district of New South Wales has dragged on, reports of a settlement have been issued, only to be contradicted again as the miners’ leaders found it possible to protract the strike. It appears, however, according to the most recent cablegrams received from Sydney, that the miners have at last decided to return to work. They will resume on terms, says the Otago Times, more favourable than those suggested by tlje State Commission which made an exhaustive inquiry into the New South Wales coal industry early in 1929; but that knowledge will he of very small satisfaction to them, for they are returning to work on the conditions laid down by the colliery owners and State Government six months ago, and realise that they have been defeated. By the people of New South Wales, and, indeed, of the whole of the Commonwealth, the resumption of work in the northern collieries will he greeted with satisfaction. The miners have lost—thrown away is a better term—hundreds of thousands of pounds in wages, but they have not been the only losers. The strike has cost Australia dear at a time when the country could ill afford any unnecessary call on its resources, and it has also had the effect of crippling its export coal trade, perhaps for many years to come. It would be pleasant to believe that the coal-miners are going hack to work because they have at last realised that the strike in which they have been engaged lias been in great part responsible fhr the serious economic disabilities under which their count rv is now labouring; such, however, is not the ease. The miners are willing to work again simply been use they can no longer afford to remain idle. Many of them probably a majority—were prepared to resume work months ago, hut the militant leaders of the Minors’ Federation, whom the Australian press unequivocally designates the Reds, prolonged the dispute,

putting off flic inevitable hour of defeat as long as possible. The hour lias now come, mainly liccau.sc the industrial unions affiliated to the Miners’ Federation have ceased to supply the New South Wales strikers with sufficient funds to continue to resist poverty. The Federation’s funds a;rc becoming exhausted, and outside contributions have dwindled practically to nothing. It is an unhappy commentary on the futility of such deliberately manoeuvred industrial stoppages that miners in New .Zealand contributed nearly £IO,OOO to the strikers in New South Wales in the first four months of this year—money which the Dominion, with its own unemployment problem, could -not afford to lose, and which lias been thrown into the same bottomless pit as the other huge sums that have been spent in maintaining some 10,000 Australian workers in idleness. 'Hie expenditure of the Millers’ Federation during the strike has been something like £20,000 a fortnight, at the lowest estimate, and now that this expenditure cannot, on the admission of the general secretary, be met any longer, work is being resumed on a basis rejected last November, in aceorda.nee with which the miners will give up nine-pence per ton of their wages, ns mine owners will reduce their profits by one shilling and threepence per ton, leaving them the precariously fiaffow margin of itinepehee alld tt fraction per ton; and the State Government and Commonwealth Government will each make concessions with a view to reducing production and transport costs on coal won. The strike has benefited nobody, It has led to an excess of unemployment at an unfortunate period, and it has also been responsible for ugly rioting, and has undoubtedly imposed the greatest suffering upon individual miners and more particularly, their families. The Miners’ Federation, now that it has boon forced to obey the dictates of reason, can take no joy in the sorry, unprofitable conflict it has carried oin. The only comfort to lie found in the coal strike is summed up by the Sydney Morning Herald, and poor comfort it is: “The resumption of work on the northern fields will register an immediate improvement in the whole industrial situation, not least because it will mark, after efforts so protracted and painful, the first step taken in lowering costs of Australian production.”