COAL MINES (MINIMUM WAGE) BILL. (Hansard, 19 March 1912)

§ Sir C. CORY
I was pointing out that the contracts for three-fourths of the out put of South Wales were running from January to 31st December. Those con tracts have been entered into at the beginning of the year, and if this Bill is to be brought into operation at once I would like to know how the owners are going to survive if they have to sell their coal at contract prices and if this minimum adds enormously increased charges to the cost. It seems to me that that is manifestly unjust to those owners who have to be held by their contracts. The Government may be able to release those contracts in the federated area where they hit home consumers, but in the case of foreign consumers you cannot get out of the contracts in the same way. To hold to them under the circumstances would be very unfair and unjust, and would cause an enormous amount of ruin in the district.
To show what a difference there is in the work two men may do under similar circumstances, I will give an instance. Collier A, working in a place on the line of the lace, earned on the average 5s. 8.83d. per day. Being dissatisfied with the wages, he approached the management for an extra allowance. The management considered the allowance given was adequate for the abnormality of the place, and they offered to remove him to another place, which was accepted. In the place in which A had been working another collier, B, was put. That man, B, earned on the average 9s. 9.17d. per day in A's place. There you had two men working in exactly the same place and one earned nearly double the wage of the other. That will be the effect of the minimum. When you establish the minimum you will find that the tendency is for the men who are slackers to slack down and to be content with the minimum. Men who would probably work more, generally speaking, will say, "Why should we strive and sweat ourselves for so much more when we can get the minimum wage." The tendency will be to decrease the output, and I can give the 1795 Government figures bearing on this point. I cannot help thinking that if the Government had confined their attentions to trying to make a settlement with regard to abnormal places, they would have clone good work. About half the men now working underground, in South Wales, at any rate, are day wage men. It seems to me that the District Boards will have their work cut out for them to establish this wage. Of the 200,000 men working in South Wales half are piecework men, and if only 1 per cent, of them made claims that would mean a thousand men that the District Board would have to deal with. The men you will have on the District Boards will have to sit twenty-four hours night and day, every day in the week, to settle that enormous amount of claims, and I do not see how any Board is going to do such a thing. You will have to set up District Boards at every colliery in order to deal with this question. I can only say I think the Government has entered on a most hazardous experiment in introducing a Bill of this kind. I can not help feeling it must end in disaster not only for the men themselves, and I believe it will end in that way for the men, but for the industry also.

§ The PRIME MINISTER
May I appeal to hon. Members to let us now bring in the Bill. They will have a much longer time for reading it before Second Reading. They will see what its provisions are, and many of the points that have been raised by the hon. Member (Sir C. Cory) will be solved by the reading of the Bill. It is quite essential, as I said yesterday, that we should get our Navy Votes later this evening. In consequence of my concession of an extra day, that is postponing the Second Reading of the Bill, we are en titled to get our Navy Votes to-night and the Report to-morrow, and I hope hon. Members will allow us to introduce and get possession of the Bill now.

§ Mr. AMERY
This measure is being de fended, as far as I understand, on the ground that it is a purely provisional mea sure, and that it is not possible in the short time allowed us to enter upon any really difficult and complicated measure or any measure creating a difficult precedent for the future. Could there be any mea sure more controversial or more likely to lead to complications than one which embodies a minimum wage? It is one thing to suggest a minimum wage as a reason able matter to two parties still discussing 1796 without the intervention of the law, but it is an entirely different matter to hurry through in a few days so controversial a question as that of the minimum wage; and to introduce it in an industry where it is more difficult and likely to lead to more complication than, I venture to say, in any other industry. After all, if you put the minimum wage, as the hon. Member for Ince (Mr. S. Walsh) remarked, as a social question, as a matter of decent living, can you say that the colliers are the first class in the country to demand relief? If you look not only at the social question, in which almost every other industry has a better claim, but look at the actual question of feasibility, is it possible, in the present condition of industry, to give anything like the minimum wage which the colliers now demand? We have the figures of the Board of Trade Census of Production, from which it appears that the total net production of this country among 7,000,000 workers is something over £700,000,000. Out of that you have to take interest, depreciation, the replacement of machinery, cost of management, and insurances of every kind, which together must amount to at least 15 per cent, of the gross production. If you deduct these items you will find the net production available for wages of all kinds is little over £400,000,000, making an average of something like 25s. per worker in the country. How can you start with a minimum of 30s. or more, when the average wage of the country is not 25s.? It is an immensely difficult thing I he Government are undertaking, and, I submit, for the purpose of a temporary settlement, an entirely unnecessary thing. They could have created their Conciliation Boards and left the question of the minimum wage to District Committees and arbitration. Further, is this Bill going to settle the dispute? This is a great national crisis, as the right hon. Gentleman said, and all he can say is that he hopes and believes the Bill will bring about a settlement, but, if it does not, other measures may have to be considered. Surely the question is already much too serious for the introduction of purely speculative measures. It is not safe, in the present condition of things, to gamble with the very industrial life of the nation. I think the country has a right to demand, now that things have gone so far, whether a measure, provisional and temporary, is introduced or not, that the strike should come to an end while further legislation is thought out. 1797 At any rate, the Government ought to bring the matter to an end now.