Miners from Italy
BELGIAN colliery owners, with thirty thousand Italians (besides nearly as many Displaced Persons) already in their employ, are busily recruiting five thousand more. The recruitment seems to have been accelerated by .the decision, so painfully taken, of the British National Coal Board to use Italian
labour in the British mines. The Belgians have the advantage of private enterprise in that they can move more rapidly than nationalised undertakings, and the chances are that they are picking the eyes of the market.
A mistaken idea seems to have gained currency in London, apparently drawn from sources in Rome, that Belgium possesses more Italian mining labour than she wants. The probable justifica- tion for this was the existence in Belgium (though not in the mines) of rather heavy unemployment. In point of fact a large part of the unemployment was seasonal, and aggravated by the hard weather around the turn of the year. Latest reports indicate a big decrease, and in any case Belgium's faith is sternly pinned to the rearmament programme (in which she looks to manufacture much more for other Atlantic Pact nations than she receives from them towards her own re-equipment), and all her present policy is based on liberating labour for the arms factories. Moreover, the majority of the unemployed are in Flanders and most of the coal mines are in Wallony.
This, however, is not the whole story. The unemployed do not seem to be badly cared for, with average allocations not far short of ten shillings per day, with no waiting period and no means test. Even if the labour-requiring mines were at their doorstep it is very doubtful if they would go down them, for successive crises have shown the Belgians to be obstinately unwilling to work underground. At the end of last September, when the mining pay-roll was just over 150,000 men, Belgium had provided well over nine-tenths of the surface workers, but only a bare half of the 107,000 working below ground. At the coal-face the difference was still more striking. Less than 37 per cent. of the 22,000 workers were of Belgian nationality.
There is nothing new about this. Belgians think of their mines as sheltering a medley of nationalities, and, after the First World War, there was a massive recruitment of foreigners, with some Italians and the accent on Czechoslovakians and Poles. After the Second World War there wai another labour shortage, which was at first dealt with by the large-scale use of German prisoners-of-war. After the repatriation of these the call for volunteers among the young Belgians doing time for collaborating with the enemy was a convenient method of offering remission of some of the heavy prison sentences which the Courts had inflicted in the early days after liberation.- It was at best a temporary expedient, and the convention wit!? Italy was signed in June, 1946.
The Belgians never got as many workers as they wanted from Italy, and they failed to keep a full proportion of those who came and learned the trade. From the Italian side, too, things worked out less well than was expected. The original arrangement was that Italy should supply labour and Belgium should supply coal ; but Italy soon found that coal bought with Marshall dollars cod her a lot less than Belgian coal, the expensiveness of which has worried everybody since the war and came near to wrecking the Schuman Plan. The convention provided for fifty thousand workers to come to Belgium, and well over eighty thousand came to try their hand. The most that Belgium ever got out of this was 46,700 in the winter of 1948. Since then the Italians have been leaving the mines at the average rate of about seven hundred a month, equivalent to the whole of the wastage which Belgium normally expects in her polyglot mining population (including the Belgian element).
If one allows for the fact that a few of the workers at the 1948 peak were still under training and later found inapies. the balance of probability is that some 15,000 trained miners returned to Italy. Some of these may be willing to try a second foreign adventure. it would, however, be unwise to pitch expectation too high. Quite a number may not yet have spent their savings ; quite a number may be happily working in more congenial jobs. If it is indeed true that the National Coal Board is looking for trained Italian labour, the field of recruitment thus seems rather limited. For practical purposes these are the only trained miners in the Italian labour market, and it looks as though they were far less than enough for the combined British and Belgian demands. This explains the Belgian enthusiasm to get ahead of the British in their recruiting.
It may well happen that the National Coal Board will be forced back to engaging untrained labour, with the expense of a six- months' training period for each man and the expectation of a wastage in training which, in the Belgian experience, came close to fifty per cent.
There may, however, be an element of luck in the horoscope of the National Coal Board, since some proportion of the Belgian- trained miners still in Italy may be either unwilling to go back to Belgium or unacceptable to the Belgian authorities. The latter class is, of course, limited to those who were sent home for reasons of discipline either by their employers or by the police. At the moment Belgium's need of mining labour is so acute that minor offenders in the disciplinary field would almost certainly be allowed back if they wanted to come. The chances are therefore that recruits in this class available to the Board will be rather unreliable types.
For the rest, the Belgian recruiting officers have a good deal to offer. Pay is good ; a hewer's minimum works out at nearly 37s.
per day and the average is about £2. Admittedly there is a six-day week without extra pay, but this adds to the regular earnings, and the miner does not have to live through a British Sunday. Volun- teers are nearer home in Belgium than in Britain ; they are in a country where they have many compatriots and among people of their own religious confession. The abundant diet can reproduce the dishes of any nation, and quite decent wine is not ruinously costly to workers earning far more than they would have earned at home. Thcrc is no currency restriction in the way of their sending money home while they stay, or taking their savings home when they go ; and, if they send for their wives and families, they have the assurance that they can stay in Belgium as long as they remain as miners.
There is a great deal in this which the National Coal Board, tied as it is by restrictive practices in the Treasury and the attitude of the unions towards foreign labour, will find it very hard to reproduce. Moreover, unless there has been a very marked change lately in the attitude towards Great Britain of the Italian people and the Italian Press, British recruiting officers may find an initial resistance to be overcome. Belgian recruiting in Italy does not, at the moment, seem to be going too well. It is nearly two months since authorisation was issued for the first thousand, and the quota was duly filled, though the men are only now arriving. The other four thousand are scheduled to be recruited before the end of March.
but missions recently returned from Rome are very reticent about their success. The question for the National Coal Board to solve is whether in fact the reserve of trained recruits has been exhausted. or whether there is a solid reserve of workers who want to mine coal but do not want to do it in Belgium.
There are almost certainly some in the latter class. A fair pro- portion of the volunteers left Belgium because they were dissatisfied with the discipline to which they were subjected underground. Though measures have been taken to prevent similar wastage, even to the extent of appointing Italians as overseers in some cases, there may well be many who cherish bitter memories and would be willing, if they are still unemployed, to give Great Britain the benefit of their doubt about trying again. There are many, too, who were unhappy about their housing conditions in the early days, a factor for which the Belgian collieries blame their Government, and themselves claim credit for the successful solving of the problem in present conditions. Enough is known in Europe about housing shortages in England for Italians to demand rather specific assurances before they, volunteer to accept work in the mines. This, however, is only one of the difficulties which the National Coal Board will have to surmount. Italians who emigrate to work are for the most part hard workers and good savers. The question of remittances home is therefore crucial ; so. too, is the question of diet, including wine.
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