WOOL TRADE CRISIS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21018, 6 May 1930, Page 10

WOOL TRADE CRISIS.

REDUCTIONS OF WAGES. POSSIBILITY OF A LOCKOUT. , ("From Our Own Correspondent.) , LONDON, March 27. , W'th only one dissentient a meeting of 1000 employers in the Yorkshire wool textile industry decided to post notices of reduced wage rates. The date was not announced, but action will be simultaneous. All the notices will be to the same effect™to reduce wages throughout the industry by 0| per cent, for time-workers and 8 i per cent, for piece-workers, with further adjustment for wool sorters and juveniles. _Mr Arthur Shaw, secretary of the association of unions, has stated that the operatives would resist the reduction. “In accordance with the ballot vote,” he said. when the employers’ notives are posted all-the unions concerned will give instructions to the operatives to cease work, and dMtry ” mean a in the inthat takes place, however, it is probable that the Minister of Labour will intervene. PROTRACTED NEGOTIATIONS. The decision will cause no surprise (writes the Labour correspondent of The limes), what has caused surprise in the protracted wage negotiations that have disturbed' the industry for so long has been the reluctance of the employers to take concerted action. Even when they had persuaded the operatives’ section 'of the Joint Industrial Council last autumn that a reduction in wages was inevitable, and the operatives rejected the opinion of their leaders, the employers still refrained trom unitedly giving notice of the reductions which were embodied in a greatly abated claim, There have already been reductions in several large areas, and now that the employers, fortified by the Macmillan reports, have decided that the reductions must bo obtained throughout the industry, the operatives are brought face to faco%ith the danger of a lockout. r 4,. acmillan recommended, in effect (the Financial Times points out), that time workers’ earnings should be reduced by O 5 per cent, and those of piece-rate workers by 8} per cent. Under the nroposed new agreements drawn up in accordance with his recommendations, the former will still be 72 per cent, above the pre-war rate and piece-rate wages 90 per cent, above that level. As it is to these particular findings that the operatives objections are mainly, if not entirely, directed it is pertinent to recall the reminder that no good can come of pursuing nn abstract argument whether the present wages should be regarded as too high or too “ low.” “ The practical matter for consideration must always be the relation of wages to the industry’s ability to pay. . .' . Clearly, if an industry endeavours to pay wages which are too high in relation to the earning capacity of the industry, that industry must decline until there is no .pool from which to pay any wages at all.” That is a principle which, if always implied or understood, cannot be too often stated particularly at the present* juncture. The idea that the . social services that have been established or greatly enlarged since the war play “ a substantial part in improving the standard of life of the workman and lightening the burden on his wages,” and may legitimately be taken mto > account when considering the wagepaying capacity of a hard-pressed industry, is also not novel. Its definite affirmationby Lord Macmillan on the eve of a Budget which will add many millions to the already excessive burden borno by British industry on that account is all-important.