STATEMENT BY MR PRYOR. WELLINGTON, January 12.

Otago Witness, Issue 2862, 20 January 1909, Page 81

STATEMENT BY MR PRYOR. WELLINGTON, January 12.

Speaking to a. Post reporter this afternoon the secretary of the Employers' Federation (Mr W. Pryor) made reference to the published correspondence between Mr S. L. P. Free (attorney for the Consolidated Goldfields Company) and the Prime Minister. Mr Pryor expressed surprise at learning for the first time that the mine-owners had not received a copy of the bill when it was first circulated. " At that time," he said, " I saw the Hon. Mr Millar, and discussed the industrial diseases clause with him, and mentioned that it affected mine-owners pretty considerably. I understood Mr Millar to say that he would send copies of the bill to all mine-owners throughout the Dominion. I mentioned that matter to the Minister this morning. He remembers the conversation, but understood that I referred only to registered industrial bodies of mining employers. These, I understand, were supplied, but the Reef ton mineowners are not registered under the act, and that accounts for their not receiving a copy of the bill." Regarding the point that the industrial diseases clause was taken from the English act, and that no special attention was given to it, Mr Pryor said it was true that in clause 5 of the memorandum attached to the bill it was stated " compensation is given for certain diseases incurred in the course of a worker's employment." This is in accordance with the English act of 1906. The Minister, too, said that the act was working satisfactorily in Great Britain. That was taken to mean that pneumoconiosis was provided for in the English act, whereas, as a matter of fact, that was not the case. The mining disease provided for by the English act was ankylostomiasis, which is altogether a different disease. The effect it has upon mine workers generally is so small as to account for the fact that it was included in the schedule of the English act without any particular objection being taken to it. Turning to the Prime Minister's reply to Mr Free, Mr Pryor urged that the position of the employers was not in any way improved thereby, as no guarantee was or could be given as to what Parliament would do in the way of amending the act. "As a matter of fact," he said. " the Press Association telegrams from Reefton and Thames show that a determined effort will be made by the miners* unions to have section 17 — the contracting out clause — repealed, and if that is done the position of the employer will be very much worse than it is at present. As Mr Skerrett points out, so far as the dats of contracting the dfcease is concerned, employers are almost entirely in the hands of the workers, so that before the employers can agree to any arrangement they must have some satisfaction as to what their position will be when Parliament deals with the act. This seems to me to point to the necessity for Parliament being immediately called together to 6ettle the question."