WAGE REDUCTION

Hokitika Guardian, 17 January 1931, Page 8

WAGE REDUCTION

RAILWAY COMPANIES’ MOVE

LARGE TOTAL SAVINGS

It is oflicially estimated in London that the saving in labour costs of the proposals made recently by the iailwav managers to the unions of the men in the. traffic and clerical grades of the service will amount to £9,500,-

000 a year, and the savings accruing from the proposals made to the rt'pitsentativos of the shopmen would he £1.500,000 a year, a total estimated saving of 0i1,000,000. This sum is roughly 10 per cent, of the total wages and salaries bill. There are nearly 625,000 railway workers affected by the proposals, about 119,000 being shopmen. The position of other grades in the railway service lias not yet been considered by the railway management. The wages of some sections, like the d'clc workers. ar> governed by awarJs. or agreements to which the railway companies are not the principal paities, says “The Times.” Five railway companies—the fou? principal groups and the Metropolitan —were represented at the meeting of the National Railway Shopmen’s Council and the following organisations of the men :—The Amalgamated Engineering .Union, the Electrical Trades Union, the Federation of Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades, the National Union of Foundry Workers, tlie National Union of Railwaymen. and the United Patternmakers Association,

Sir Ralph Wedgwood, the chairman of the General Managers Conference, made a full statement explaining the present financial position of the companies, and submitted the following proposals:— The war wage of 16/6 per week at present paid to railway workshop staff and stores staff whose rates of pay and conditions of service arc governed by Decision No. 728 and subsequent decisions of the Industrial Court to be reduced by: 6/6 per week in the case of men employed on piecework or other systems of payment by results, and 4/6 per week in the case of men employed on timework, leaving a war wage of 10/- per week in the case of piece workers, etc., and 12/- per week in the case of timeworkers.

Sir Ralph Wedgwood pointed out that the proposed reductions would bring the war wage of railway shopmen to the level of the war wage in the general engineering industry. Should direct negotiations fail to produce agreement the subsequent procedure will be different from that provided for the conciliation grades. For the conciliation grades there is first the Central Wages Board (a body consisting wholly of railway company and trade union representatives) and afterwards the National Wages

Board, which has an independent chairman and includes representatives of the users of railways. The appeal in the case of the shopmen, is to the Industrial Court, the chairman of

which. Sir Harold Morris, is also chairman of the National Wages Board.