Says Miners Wages Lag Behind Standard

Northern Advocate, 6 July 1945, Page 2

Says Miners Wages Lag Behind Standard

(P.Aj WELLINGTON, This Day. Replying today to an allegation that the Court of Arbitration, in its last standard wage pronouncement, had stated that mine workers’ wages had already advanced further than the basic rate affected by the Court’s pronouncement, the President of the United Mine Workers’ of New Zealand (Mr A. Prendiville) said that authorship of the allegation had been carefully concealed, but in its careless handling of facts, it bore all the earmarks of coal mine owners’ propaganda. It was not correct that miners’ wages had increased in a greater degree than had standard rates of wages, and the court had never said anything of the kind. Actually, to restore coal hewers’ rates to the relative position with respect to the standard wage rates, piece work rates would require to be increased by 371 per cent instead of the 71 agreed on for State Mines. The disparity, was not so great in the case of day workers, but, in their case also, the rates had not been increased as much as the standard rates..