THE MINERS’ DISPUTE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19009, 3 November 1923, Page 15

THE MINERS’ DISPUTE.

CAMPAIGN TO RAISE FUNDS £2OOO A MONTH WANTED. MEN PREPARING FOR LONG STRUGGLE. (From Oub Own Correspondent.) CHRISTCHURCH, November 2 Now that Government mediation in tho coal dispute has failed, the minors have settled down to prepare for a long struggle. Their chief need is funds, and every ettert is being made to get these. Some weeks ut;o Mr B. Davidson, a member of the West Coast Miners’ Council, went over to Australia on a money-raising mission, and now the miners are making a general appeal to trade unionists throughout New Zealand for regular subscriptions to the strike fund. Mr J. O’Brien, M.P. for Westland, has started on a sneech-making tour of the North Island, and Mr 11. T. Armstrong, M.P., will probably tour the South Island in tho same way. Mr T. G. Daly, president of the Blackball Miners’ Union, is in Christchurch at present. He addressed a meeting of employees at the railway goods sheds yesterday, and a meeting of the executive of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants in tlio evening. Both promised assistance. At noon to-day he met tho employees at the Addington Railway Workshops, who passed tho following motion without dissent :—“That this meeting of railway workshops employees expresses its disapproval of the conduct of tho W T est Coast coal employers in locking-out the miners, and promises its financial support to the women and children during the lock-out. A meeting of members of the A.S.JI.S. will be held on Sunday morning to decide the amount of the contribution to be made. According to one report, the miners say that if they can get £2OOO a month they can hold out indefinitely. However, the contributions received so far from other bodies of workers have not been coming in at anything like this rate. A_ large number ol other coal and quartz miners in the dominion, including tlm men in the State mines and the co-operative miners at Reefton, have struck levies of 2i per cent., or thereabouts, on wages, or have guaranteed definite monthly sums, but even so, £2OOO a month will be difficult to raise. A curious feature of the trouble is that it is definitely a sectional one. The men who are out do not object the State miners and the co-operative parties continuing in work so long as thev contribute to the strike fund. Apparently the miners’ organisation expects to force the issue, not by causing hardship to the general public, but by curtailing the profits of the mining companies. At present tho actual matter tho dispute is the way in’ which tho parties are to be brought together, whether through the Arbitration Court or otherwise. _ The merits of whatever points are in dispute between the companies and tho unions do not seem to have been discussed, though tlie unions have demanded a weoklv wage of £3 15s Id (the Arbitration Court’s minimum) for labourers and other unskilled workers. They declare that these men. owing to interruptions, make only from £2 15s to £3 5s a week —less than a fair living wage. At all events the struggle is likely to last till well after Christmas.