Monday's papers contained the text of the important agree- ment
provisionally signed by the representatives of employers and men in the shipbuilding trade. This agreement immensely strengthens the guarantees for the avoidance of strikes in that great industry already provided by the engineering agreement of 1808, modified and extended in 1907. The great feature of the agreement is the establishment, in addition to the central conference between the Employers' Federation and the Union or Unions involved in any dispute, of a grand conference embodying the authority of the trnployers' Federation on one aide and the whole of the twenty-six Unions which aro parties to the agreement on the other. Refusal to come to terms on the part of the men Would throw all the Unions out of work, while any recalcitrant employer will have to face the concerted forces of the twenty-six Unions. The agreement also Includes a new scheme of wages, in which distinction is drawn between proposed changes held to be due to the general condition of the shipbuilding industry and those caused by local conditions. Finally, there are clauses providing for the settlement of disputes about piecework by a joint committee, none of the members of which is to have any personal interest In the yard where the dispute has occurred. In fine, the new agreement, though it cannot render strikes impossible, has so far extended and perfected the machinery of negotiation as to render their occurrence far less likely than heretofore.
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