THE COAL STRIKE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 2 December 1926, Page 4

THE COAL STRIKE.

The cable news yesterday made it clear that the end of the eoai strike is in sight, and that’ comparatively few of the strikers are holding out. The. Government terms, if effected by legislation, will have an added interest to New.Zealanders, inasmuch as they will represent the introduction into England of compulsory arbitration. Such arbitration is to be limited, it is true; foi no appeal to the industrial tribunal which it is proposed to create will -be permitted against any district agreement complying with “standard provisions. The term is not absolutely clear for it may mean agreements which comply with conditions to be laid down bv the new legislation, but it is much more likely that it signifies those agreements which are referred to in the Coal Commission’s report aS being based upon the “standard” rate of wages that is to sav, upon a basis of 33« per cent above a level approximately equal to the rates m force in 1914. This was the standard arrived at by the agreement of 1924, which was in force at the date when the Government agreed to pay the owners' that subsidy winch was a mistake from the first, and which only succeeded in postponing the inevitable catastrophe. That subsidy was paid because the owners declared that they could not pay the standard rate of want's and retain the industry on a so - vent, basis; and to that contention they still hold. It is notable that this assertion lias been largely supported by the report of the Coal Commission itself. After exhaustively considering the financial position of the industry, the Commissioners reported that it was impossible to insist that wages in the industry should in no case be below those ruling before the war, let alone that they must be 334 per cent above them “To hold rigidly to this,” says the report. . . “may mean violent contraction of the industry and a disastrous degree of unemployment.”