THE MINERS' CASE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17860, 5 August 1918, Page 6

THE MINERS' CASE.

ADDRESS BY MR 11. SEMPLE. At.tho Opera House last evening Mr R. Semple, miners' representative, addressed a fairly large audience on the subject of the industrial dispute at present existing between the miners and their employers. Mr 11. Hunter presided. Mr Semple said that the miners had been much maligned recently, and ho proposed to place their side of the case as fairly as he could before the public. For .some time past the miners had been demanding a 20 per cent increase in pay, and the employers had refused this demand, although Governmental pressure had been brought to bear on them, and had also shown a disinclination to meet in conference the representatives of the Miners' Federation, preferring, they .said, to deal with separate unions. In the course of statements, which had been given considerable publicity, the employers had inferred that the high wages of the miners wero responsible for the present high price of coal. The rates paid for hewing coal ranged from Is id to 2s lOd per ton, and coal sold as-high as £3 4s a ton retail in Wellington, so that it was fairly obvious that the hewing cost had very little bearing on present inflated values. According to the .Crown Prosecutor in the "go-slow" prosecutions at Auckland, the rates paid at that time equalled from 15s 6d to 22s 2d per dav. Adding 7i per cent increase given since, the average worked out at 19s 10d nor day to-day. In 1914 the average per day, taking 17} per cent off present rates, must have been about 16s. A miner did not work every day of the week, and a careful study of pay-sheets and other data showed' that miners worked on an average 240 days, and other mine hands 255 days a year. A studv of household budgets, analysed and averaged, showed that in 1914 a miner, with his wife and a family of three children, spent on food, clothes and rent, without any luxuries, £144 18s 5d per annum, and had a surplus of £56 17s lid per annum to provide against sickness and old age, and cover lodge and union dues, insurance, new furniture, and so forth. In 1918 the annual expenditure was £219 3s 3d, and the.surplus to provide the items he had enumerated was only £l9 9s 9d. In regard to shift workers, who in 1914 received 10s a day and now received 13s a day, in 1914 their annual budget was £124" 8s sd, and their surplus £3 Is 7d. To-day the annual budget worked out at £l9O 3s 3d, and as the wages only averaged £153 there was a deficit of £37 3s 3d. The deficit, of course, had to be met by a pinched scale of living. Dealing with mining profits, Mr •Semple said that the Point Elizabeth State mine, according to Government statistics, made a profit of £BOOO in 1915, £IB,OOO in 1916-17, and £24,466 for the financial year just concluded. It was a difficult mine to work, requiring careful timbering. What, he asked, must bo the profits in a mine where no-timbering was required? Replying to a- suggestion which had been made by the mineowners that the rate of production was capable of acceleration, the speaker quoted the Minister of Mines as saying in December last that production had increased from 640 tons per man per annum in 1914 to 752 tons per man per annum in 1916, with an equally good year in 1917; and the Minister of Munitions, who a few days ago had stated that there had been a further increase since the Minister of Mines made his statement. .