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Taranaki Daily News, 17 January 1930, Page 8

THE NEW SOUTH WALES CRISIS. The position in the New South Waics coal mining area is very ominous. The reports of miners arming and drilling with the avowed intention of preventing work proceeding in the mines; the calling out of the safety men, whose sole duty is to keep the mines fit for working when the dispute is over, and whose withdrawal may mean the suin of certain of the pits; and the actual conflicts with the police have demonstrated how far an industrial dispute can go towards an attack upon civilisation itself. That this should happen in a country with systems, both State and Federal, designed to prevent industrial unrest by the substitution of compulsory arbitration for open conflict is one of the bitter ironies of the situation. It shows, moreover, how the underlying principles of real conciliation and arbitration are undermined when compulsion is added to them. In the graver aspect which the dispute has now assumed the exceedingly small matter upon which the miners are holding out is liable to be lost sight of. All they were asked to accept was a reduction of nine pence per ton in hewing rates conditional upon the owners accepting one shilling per ton less for the coal won. The men’s own delegates agreed to this as being a fair contribution by Labour towards the resuscitation of the Australian coal industry, but the rank and file refused to be bound by their own representatives’ agreement. It would be interesting to calculate how many months of work even at the old rates of pay will be required to make up for the losses in wages caused by the strike, to say nothing of the indirect losses to the districts affected.