The National Maritime Board, representing shipowners and the officers and
men of the merchant service, agreed last week to reduce wages by £2 10s. a month or 8s. 6d. a week, and to attempt to devise a scheme for regulating wages in future. As the high cost of operating ships has led, apart from the coal strike, to a temporary collapse of the shipping trade, some reduction of wages was inevitable, and it is good to know that it has been arranged in a friendly and reasonable spirit. In the engineering trades, which are seriously affected by foreign competition, the employers have proposed reductions of wages by 6e. a week or 15 per cent., but the trade unions have not yet come to any decision on the matter. The miners' leaders alone have hitherto refused to discuss any reductions of wages, being intent on political schemes for securing " nationalization."
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