THE RAILWAY STRIKE

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12757, 29 September 1919, Page 7

THE RAILWAY STRIKE

THE SECRETARY'S STATEMENT, DETERMINES OPPOSITION OF PREMIER’S ADVISERS. COMPARISON IK SATES OF PAT. By T«legxtph—l’re«i Assooiatian—Copjrifil A«*lsiliac and K.Z. Oib!» Association. (Received April 29, 9.25 a.m.) LOKDON, September 28» Mr J. H. THomas, M.P., Secretary of the Railwayman’s Union, in an interview, said that the stoppage was complete from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s. Many would regard the upheaval as an attack upon the whole Constitution of the country. Some would welcome that, and the Press was making it the issue. He begged the Press to refrain from anything making wors\ an already difficult situation. The railwaymen would not be diverted from fighting for a principle Let the public judge between the following figures:— Platelayers in South Wales are offered a maximum of 44s per week as a standard rate, and they must work side by side with colliery platelayers who are goverened by the same conditions in regard to rent and cost of living, and whose present fixed standard is ils per week and upwards. Shunters, whose mortality in railways is one in nineteen, killed or injured, are offered a maximum of 60s, a sum which will not affect more than 20 per cent. They work side by side with colliery shunters whose standard rate of pay is from 76s per week to 103s. Treating them as ordinary common labourers and comparing them with the lowest paid labour in flourmills, the latter have a minimum of 60s per week, while a builder’s labourer receives a minimum of Is 3d per hour in large towns. Compare the Government’s offer to a passenger and goods’ guard, with long experience of railway work, of a minimum of 60s, with the standard rate paid to a ’bus conductor of 73 s 6d after sis months’ service, and with a tram conductor’s 70s as an ordinary week’s wages. My last offer to the Government was simple: We abandoned everything except one request, namely, would the Government treat other grades on the same principle as they „ d tf ßandfirembn?Thc answer was iNo. Whether the Executive had called a strike or not, do the public believe for a moment that 300,000 men would be content to work under conditions wliere a principle was conceded by the Government to one grade and denied to them? It would be impossible, and the railways would be one seethinfurnace from January to December. ° Mr Thomas added that Mr Lloyd George, at the commence, made a suggestion in which Mr Thomas saw a ray of hope. Sir Eno Geddes immediately said to Mr Lloyd George: You cannot possibly accept that.” Mr Thomas concluded Sever in all my experience have I found so determined a desire on the part of some of the Prime Munster s advisers to do everything to prevent a settlement