MINERS COINING MONEY.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 December 1921, Page 7

MINERS COINING MONEY.

OVER £2l IN A WEEK. Sydney. Nov. 30. Two miners employed at Aberdere Centra]) colliery, in the Cessnock (N.S.W,) district, have established a record for the amount of pay drawn for the fortnight’s work. Their last pay totalled £B6 for the pair, which works out at £2l 10s a week each. Pairs of miners have frequently drawn £BO per fortnight in the district, but this pair of miners are not regarded as fast workers by their mates. Many of the mines, working shorter hours than the managers of the mines, with no worries or responsibilities, are making more than the high officials are paid' Some of the men have their own motorcars, in which they drive to and from their work. Some even ply their cars for hire out of working hours, in competition with the licensed drivers of vehicles. A protest against this cutting competition was recently made by the taxi-drivers in Cessnock without result. Though the work of the coalminei* is strenuous, the working day is not a long one. It is supposed to be for a period of eight hours from bank to bank, but official figures show that some of the men have lifted £3O for not more than 50 hours’ actual labor. The big draws are not limited to the men who do the actual mining of the coal. Wheelers, usually young and unmarried, working on tonnage, take pay allotments that run up to £2 a day. These young irresponsibles, with too much money and no canes, are the cause 'of most of the stoppages of work in the pits. In the course of the present year there have been over 300 holdups in the northern collieries, some of them over matters of the most trifling concern to the whole body of workers.