No Quarter The absurd chain of events which began in
May with the Amalgamated Engineering Union's claim that £2 a week was the wage increase needed to meet the increase in the cost of living will now have the most serious consequences, if the Government does not intervene, for the national economy. The employers, adopting an equally severe bargaining position, refused point-blank to consider this or any claim; whereupon the Confederation reacted violently and decided on restriction of piecework and a ban on overtime. This was a hasty and irresponsible move, but the Confederation has stuck to its guns. The recent efforts of Sir Robert Gould, Chief Industrial Com- missioner of the Ministry of Labour, have co,me to nothing. Yielding a step, the employers agreed that the case should go to arbitration; the Confederation would not hear of it. Arbitration was not even mentioned at the meeting on Wednes- day when the executive council of the Confederation decided that the ban should be imposed throughout the engineering, ship-building and ship-repairing industries on and after October 20th. This is being done against the better judgement of many of the Confederation's members. Indeed, such action can make sense to none but Communists, with whom the A.E.U., the originator of the claim, is richly supplied, Their responsibility is irresponsibility, and it is high time that the Confederation as a whole realised it.
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