The negotiations with the railwaymen were complicated by the question
of the men employed in railway workshops. A hundred thousand of these engineers and other craftsmen belong to the National Union of Railwaymen, but the majority belong to other Unions organized on the old plan by crafts and not by industries. The railway shopmen in the National Union naturally asked for the same conditions of pay and service as their fellow-members. But the rival Association of Railway Shopmen warned the Government that the National Union was not empowered to act for the shopmen as a body. The Amalga- mated Society of Engineers pointed out that, if special terms were given to the engineers in the National Union, the whole engineering trade would be upset. The Government wisely declined to meddle with this hornets' nest of inter-Union rivalries and jealousies. Only a joint Conference of all the Unions concerned is capable of adjusting the difficulty. The Government might well invite the Industrial Comer, nee, as a very repr sentative body, to inquir • into this complex and obscure question of the railway shopmen, whose ease must not be overlooked.
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