TRADES AND LABOUR

Otago Witness, Issue 2565, 13 May 1903, Page 21

TRADES AND LABOUR

LONDON, May 5. Contrary to the advice of the executive of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers that the men should not strike pending a joint conference, 6000 Clyde engineers go out at the end of this week. May 8. The employers are maintaining their notice of a reduction in wages. Six thousand Clyde engineers continue on strike May 9. The bill to legalise peaceful persuasion and picketing and to prohibit actiou against trades unions as such, brought in by Mr D. J. Shackleton, M.P., Labour member, was rejected by 2-16 votes to 226. The Government opposed the bill, but promised an inquiry. Mr Balfour characterised the measure as fragmentary, ambiguous, and apparently alarmingly revolutionary in regard ta some aspects of some vast and complicated questions going to the root of industrial life. Since Parliament must shortly reconsider the whole position of combinations of workmen, employers, and capitalists, it was advisable that a commission should investigate modern, serial, and economic phenomena to throw light on the principles and lines of future action. The majority were entirely Unionists, ninny Ministerialists abstaining from voting. The executive in London has withheld strike pay to the Clyde engineers. The Clyde engineers went out on strike conrary to .-he advice of the executive. May 10. Mr Barnes, general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, has warned the local secretaries of the Clyde branches of the association that they will be held personally responsible if they distribute benefits or incur expenses in connection with the stoppage of work. NEW YORK, May 8. Mr Carnegie, in the course of his presidential address to the Iron and Steel Institute, said that if every workman was a shareholder there would be an end to most of the conflicts between capital and labour. OTTAWA, May 7. The Montreal employers and the lone-

shoremen both refuse the Labour De> partment's intervention in the dispute which has arisen. MELBOURNE, May 8. The coal strike at Outtrim and Junfr burma has developed a serious side s owing to the arrest of six women charged with besetting a non-unionist's house and threatening violence. An angry feeling has been aroused amongst the strikers, which may lead to serious results. £750 has been forwarded by the New' South Wales cral miners to aid t-Ee men. We have received a communication from a New Zealancler in Rhodesia in which he asks that a warning should be given to men in this colony against signing on for work for a period of 12 months or longer in Rhodesia at a wage of £10 per month. H« states that the wages paid to mining hands in Rhodesia and South. Africa generally range from £20 to £40 per month, the men to fiud themselves. Living costs from £7 10s to £10 per month.