COAL TRADE DEADLOCK

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 641, 18 April 1929, Page 9

COAL TRADE DEADLOCK

CONFERENCE IN SYDNEY FAILS BREACH NOT NARROWED - SYDNEY, Wednesday The negotiations for a settlement of the coalmining dispute have resulted in a deadlock. The breach betwot u the mineowners and the men is novas wide as ever. The conference between the parti. . called by the Prime Minister. Mr. Bruce, and the Premier of New South Wales, Mr. T. R. Bavin, has been in progress several days under the chair manship of Sir Wallace Bruce, of Adelaide. The cost of production, a reduction in wages and the elimina tion of pinpricks were discussed. Then the miners’ delegates submitted proposals to the owners’ tl< 1 - gates, who unanimously rejected them. These proposals required the reopening of the mines on the original ba . an investigation of the owners’ bool > and a provision by the owners of ox: shilling a ton on the selling price of coal toward a fund for the alleviation of the distress of northern miners no: again absorbed in the industry. The owners’ counter-proposal which were rejected, insisted that in cost of production should be rednH by some form of reduction in way and upon the discontinuance of th evil arising from the virtual con* d of the mines by the unions.