COAL MINING.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 6 July 1925, Page 5

COAL MINING.

CRITICAL POSITION.

OVER WAGES QUESTION.

tress Association—Electric Telegraph—Copyrigli* ' LONDON, Saturday.

The, miners are hopeful that they will receive help from other great unions in resisting the coal-owners’ proposals. Mr Herbert Smith presided at a meeting of the sub-committee appoint-' ed (o work out details of the proposed alliance of miners, railwaymen, transport workers and engineers, The subcommittee'was engaged, for two hours amending the suggested constitution of the alliance. This must bo submitted to the various, unions and further conferences.

What the.miners most resent is the suggestion that the owners’ profits should become a first charge'on industry, and the. minimum wage disappear from the national scheme. They regard the proposals as a reversion to district settlements and a consequent weakening of the federation. The only hope of averting the biggest miners’ fight on record is the owners’ suggestion of a conferciice before July 31st, when the existing agreement will terminate, and the possibility of Government intervention.—Reuter.

AMERICAN DEMAND. NEW YORK, Friday. A message from Scranton, Pennsylvania, states that the Anthracite Miners’ Convention here demanded a 10 per cent wage increase. The operators -aro expected to insist on a deduction on the present scale. A conference between the two groups is scheduled for July, as an attempt to effect an ’agreement before August Ist, when a new schedule will be necessary. Mr John Lewis, international president of the United Mine. Workers, has threatened a general strike of half-a-million anthracites and bituminous miners if the operators .continue.,: increasing the employment of non-union labour. The union has virtually been driven out in West Virginia, where union-produecd coal is now 10. per cent of the total compared with 90 per cent five years ago. The operators contended that it Was impossible to conduct the mines -on a 7:1 dollars day, the union scale, and closed the pits, which were reopened a few weeks later at a non-union scale of between four and five dollars. Since then the operators in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky have acted likewise. The union leaders contend that this is a concerted'effort to kill the organisation throughout the country. Government officials are apprehensive of tho possibility of a complete lack of fuel for the winter. —Aus. and N.Z. Cable Assn.