RAILWAY CONCESSIONS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8264, 29 October 1912, Page 4

RAILWAY CONCESSIONS

The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company completed negotiations , last month with all the representatives of the various grades of their employees under the Railway Conciliation Scheme, and it is officially announced that to a total number - of 19,000 oinployees concessions have been granted which amount to JJIS2X per week at the same time that the total number of working hours per week have been reduced 29,595. Stated in figures for the year, this oompany has granted increased wages amounting to JJ79.092 and reduced the hours of its staff by .1,538,689. These concessions are distributed among the wage-earning staff as follows: Ino. per arm. , £ 4756 loco men 24,436 3972 goods yard workers ......... 13,000 2440 platelayers, etc 10,192 2040 signal and points men ... 9,776 2024 guards and porters 8,060 v 2122 carters and vanboys 8,164 1640 goods guards and shunters 5,616 • The greatest reductions in hours are gained by the goods yard workersT carters, platelayers, apd permanent way men. An increased lodging allowance to poods guards will cost .£9OO per year, and increases in stabling allowances to carters will cost .£9OO per year. Time and a quarter for overtime has been granted to 5636 employees, and 1280 goods and passenger guards will receive the maximum rates of pay for their respective grades in less time than formerly. LABOR M.P. AND STRIKE WEAPON *

Speaking at Coventry (England) a few Weeks ago, Mr J. H. Thomas. IIT. (organising secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants), while endorsing the action of the Trade Union Congress against interference with the power of strike, declared that a check must be given to those people who assumed that a strike was the workers' first and only weapon. He claimed that conciliation must precede the other step. Anyone making the strike tho first weapon, he asserted, was no friend of Labor.