COTTON INDUSTRY DISPUTE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 12 January 1931, Page 5

COTTON INDUSTRY DISPUTE

WIDE EXTENSION THREATENED (British Official Wireless) RUGBY,' Dili January. The dispute between millowners and weavers in a section of the cotton industry concerning the introduction of more looms per weaver, which caused die withdrawal of nearly five thousand operatives from some of the mills in Burnley last Monday, continues. A meeting of the employer’s organisation to-day decided to recommend its local association to support the Burnley owners if the dispute is not settled by 17th January, thus threatening a wide extension. The Ministry of Labour has been following the developments closely and an early intervention is anticipated. NINE MILLS STOPPED A SERIOUS OUTLOOK LONDON, 10th January. Burnley mill owners have stopped nine mills, locking out 25,000 employees. Two large mills are still open, but probably they will shortly be involved in the dispute, which is expected to spread to all weaving sheds in Lancashire within a week, making idle 200,000. It is feared there is danger of stoppage of the whole industry, in which half a million are employed. Mill owners, declaring that unless drastic steps are taken foreigners will kill the industry, insist on workers working eight house looms instead of four, the workers refusing saying that in mills where it has ben tried women have been carried out exhausted.