DEDUCING MINERS’ HOURS

Taranaki Daily News, 25 July 1929, Page 11

DEDUCING MINERS’ HOURS

BRITISH GOVERNMENT PLAN

TERMS OF THE LEGISLATION

CONTROVERSY IN INDUSTRY

By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. Australian Press Association.

United Service.

London, July 23.

It is reported on good authority at Blackpool that the Government intends to revert to the 7-hour day in the mining industry by easy stages. It will introduce a 7J-hours Bill before the end of the year and when the 8-hours Act expires in 1931, seven hours will be reached.

This is expected to meet the demands of the Miners’ Federation. The owners, however, regard the position as critical and a meeting has been convened to discuss the situation.

The Rt. Hon. W. Graham, President of the Board of Trade, stated in the House of Commons the Government’s intentions regarding the mining industry. He said that the Government had now had the advantage of consultations with the Miners’ Federation and the coal owners.

As a result legislation dealing with hours of work and other factors in the coal industry would be introduced during the autumn. In the intervening months the Government would be in regular consultation with the federation as to the terms of that legislation.

The representatives of the coal owners, whom the Government met yesterday, were informed that the Government desired the owners to develop marketing arrangements and a central scheme for co-ordination of the active ties of the district organisations. In the legislation to be introduced the Government would take power to enable it, if necessary, to compel colliery owners to conform to the rules of a district organisation inaugurated with the approval of the owners of the collieries producing the major part of the output of the district. The Government would also take power to enable it to initiate a scheme in any district’ which failed to constitute an organisation having the approval of the majority, and would take similar power to set up a central co-ordin-ating authority if one were not now constituted volun :rily. The owners had also been invited to remain in constant consultation with the Government as to the terms of the legislation.

The President of the Board of Trade announced that an inquiry into the cotton trade would be conducted by a sub-committee of the Committee of Civil Research. The sub-committee would contain two Ministers, one prominent industrialist, one leading trade unionist, and one accountant. The names would be drawn in the widest possible fashion. They would have regard to the conditions of the industry and its power to recover the home and export markets. He hoped the inquiry would be completed in three or four months at the outside.

NO DECISION YET REACHED.

STORMY HOURS AT CONFERENCE

.Received July 24, 7 p.m. London, July 24. After a three hours’ private session the miners’ conference adjourned without coming to a decision on the Government’s proposals regarding the working hours. The meeting was stormy, the extreme element expressing great disappointment with what one delegate termed the “quarter measures” of the Government. The discussion will be continued to-morrow, but it is expected the conference will give the executive a free hand to negotiate. The Daily Mail declares the Government has definitely informed the miners’ conference that it is impossible to revoke the Eight Hours Act. The Government argued that .the owners would* immediately demand a reduction in wages, thus provoking a crisis comparable to that of 1926.

The Times, in a leader, expresses the opinion that the industry must increase its exports and not load itself with a handicap which would close the overseas markets. Equally intolerable waa the suggestion that British consumers should be surcharged in order that cheaper coal could be sold abroad.