“DOG WATCH” SHIFT.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 69, 16 March 1912, Page 3

“DOG WATCH” SHIFT.

The question of the abolition of the second shift l in the collieries on the South Maitland field, dissension regarding" which brought the proceedings of the Collieries’ Conciliation Commit tee. at Newcastle to an abrupt termination, (has (says the Sydney Telegraph) for some months threatened to precipitate a crisis in the northern coal trade. According to the reports the miners determined to bring it to an issue at tho end of last year, but when members of tho Government exerted some pressure they consented to leave the matter in abeyance for a little longer, in the hope that some more peaceable way out of the difficulty than then seemed lilclcy would present itself. Mr Harle’s statement, made evidently with the concurrence of the proprietors as a, body, that the question is not one for negotiation, bub will he determined solely by the mine managements, alters the whole position, of course, and in view of it the miners’ representatives on the Conciliation Committee may he regarded as having no other alternative hut to withdraw and report to tho Delegate Board, from which they had derived their authority to negotiate with the proprietors’ represeu Datives. Tiie convening of an aggregate mooting of all the miners of the Federation to consider the situation, wfliich the miners’ president says is likely, must bo regarded as a grave step, since meetings of the kind are generally called only in times of acute disputation. The system of the second shift is peculiar to the South Maitland mines among those of tho north. On tho parent field, Newcastle, all the mining work of the day Js concentrated into one shift, anti the Teralba collieries, which are also older than those of South Maitland, likewise have only one shift per day. The present demand, therefore, is for uniformity throughout a. district which is unionistically one. When the South Maitland mines’ began to develop, throe shifts were worked so that they might the more speedily be brought to the point of having a commercial output, and after that point was reached the system was maintained. It is some five or six years since the third shift, or the “dog watch” as it was called, was abolished, as the result of a forceful agitation, which culminated in a strike. There were arguments in favour of 'doing away with tho three shifts which do not apply to the case of the second shift, and the most material difference is that while work from 11 p.m. till 7 a.m. precludes the workman from sleeping during the hours which Nature intended should he spent in sleep, the same cannot he said of a shift which terminates at 11 p.m. In most metalifcrous mines, and in many other occupations in different parts of tho country, however, tho three-shift principle is -still in vogue.