Aug. 1965 THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER 5
wa.) UNITED KINGDOM REPORT

By BILL HAWKES

We are told that prices are
lower outside of London...
I hope so. The Trust reserved
rooms for myself, the Austra-
lian and the New Zealander
for our first week’s stay in
London, the charge was 8
guineas ($25) a week for bed
and breakfast. Most of the
time breakfast was one poor
lonely egg, two small rock
hard pieces of toast and a
liquid I never was able to
identify, it certainly was not
coffee.

At the end of the week we
moved and shared two rooms
and a kitchen at a cost of
£3.15.0 ($11.25) each a
week; this meant we had to
cook our own breakfast, and
while none of us are culinary
experts we did a lot better
than at the other place.

While £3.15.0 a week may
not sound like much in B.C.,
it is about as low as you can

get decent accommodation for
in London, and when you
consider there are many peo-
ple here who are only earn-
ing £9 to £13 ($27 to $39)
a week and paying bus or
tube fares each day as well,
it is quite a large bite out of
their income.

CIGARETTES

Cigarettes are very expen-
sive, they vary in price from
52c for 20 very small filter
tipped to 84c for 20 popular
brand, standard sized, plain
cigarettes. Plain cigarettes
cost more than filter tipped
because of the extra tobacco
they contain.

If any of you are interested,
draught beer costs about 35c
a pint. It will vary a little
from pub to pub. Bottled beer
is about 20c a bottle. The beer
is weaker than Canadian beer
and served at room tempera-
ture which takes a little get-
ting used to. However, most
of the pubs are nice friendly
places, much superior to our
beer parlors. Hard liquor is
taxed very heavily; Scotch
whisky costs more in Scot-
land than it does in Canada.
This means I stick to beer.

MEETINGS

While in London I met with
representatives of the Treas-
ury for an outline on Britain’s
economic situation and had
three meetings with different
representatives of the Labour
De ent for information
on industrial relations, labour
laws and Government train-
ing. I also visited the Labour
Party Headquarters for infor-
mation on the relationship be-
tween the Labour Party and
the trade unions.

One thing I found inter-
esting is that the Government
takes the position that it is

ibility to

iii ih panple, therefore the

BILL HAWKES, a member of Local 1-85 IWA and Camp Chairman at the Franklin River
Division of MacMillan, Bloedel and Powell River, who left last April to spend six months in
the United Kingdom on a bursary offered by the Imperial Relations Trust, has submitted a
series of articles describing conditions as he found them in his travels. The following is the

second article in the series.

Government has passed a new
Act which assesses all em-
ployers money for training. If
they provide adequate train-
ing they will receive a rebate,
if they do not the Labour de-
partment will use the money
for this purpose. This Act has
the support of the Conserva-
tive Party and those employ-
ers who are already training;
it is expected to greatly en-
courage those employers who
have not been been training.

CENTRES

The Department of Labour
now has 32 training centres
and train about 11,000 each
year. The Department does
not do much apprenticeship
training but concentrates on
re-training workers who have
become redundant or dis-
abled, and training unskilled
adult workers whether em-
ployed or unemployed. While
training at a Government
training centre a single man
gets $24.00 a week and a mar-
ried man with two children
$30.00 a week. This is exclu-
sive of income tax and na-
tional insurance premiums.
There are also allowances
made for travel and accom-
modation.

Incidentally, employers
here are required by law to
employ a small quota of dis-
abled workers. If they need
labour and do not have their
full quota they must go to
the Government placement
centre who will find them a
suitable disabled worker.

HEADQUARTERS

I have been to the National
Headquarters of the Trans-
port and General Workers
Union, the National Union of
“Mineworkers, the Union of
Printing, Bookbinding and
Paperworkers, the Ministry
of Technology, The Co-opera-
tive Wholesale Society, and
seen a new town and an
Adult Education College.

The Transport and General
Workers Union is the larg-
est in the U.K. with 1,500,000
members. It employs a staff
of 600, including clerical
workers, plus 500 full time
officers, and maintain 170 of-
fices throughout the U.K.

It is divided into 138
regions and 15 trade groups,
each region will have a full
time secretary and within
each region each trade group
will have a full time secretary
with staff. There is also a na-
tional secretary for each trade
group.

The General Secretary of
the T.G.W. is elected for life

by a vote of the entire mem-
bership, all other full time of-
ficers and staff are hired by a
sub-committee of the General

BILL HAWKES

Executive Council. The Gen-
eral Executive Council is
composed entirely of lay

_members who are elected on

a trade and regional basis.
The trade group representa-

tives are elected by and from
the national trade group com-
mittees, one from each group
irrespective of size. The re-
gional representatives are
elected by a ballot vote of the
members within each region.
Regions with 50,000 members
or less have one representa-
tive, those with 50,000 to 150,-
000 have two, and those with
over 150,000 have three. They
are elected for two years and
are the governing body of the
union between delegated con-
ferences which are held bi-
ennially.

This union does a lot of
educational work with its
members. First, they provide
three home study courses on
the history, structure and
government of their union.
The members who have com-
pleted those courses may then
attend day and week-end
schools sponsored by the un-
ion, 4,274 did in 1962. They
hold one and two week
schools which teach between
450 and 500 students each
year. They send 100 to 150
students a year to the T.U.C.
for follow-up courses of two
weeks duration and give 12
full time scholarships each
year. These scholarships are
for one academic year. Also,
local government authorities
will give education grants to
people who they feel will
benefit from academic train-
ing. As these grants are quite
small, the T.G.W. will often
supplement them if the recip-
ient is one of their members.

The National Union of
Mineworkers is the closest

to an industrial union I have
found in the U.K. and one of

the few which has the check-
off system of collecting dues.
It is very politically conscious
and supplements the salaries
of members of Parliament
who are members of that
union.

MILITANT

The mining M.P.’s have a
committee with an elected
chairman and secretary.
These two are ex-officio mem-
bers of the National Execu-
tive Board and have to report
to the Executive Board’s
meetings. However, any full
time officer of the N.U.M.
who is elected to Parliament
has to give up his job. It is
a militant union very con-
cerned with safety, one of the
rights it gained is the right
to appoint its own safety in-
spectors in the mines.

I have been having two
meetings a day with people
from various Government de-
partments or trade unions
and have seen a few indus-
tries. Now that we have left
London and are in Cardiff,
Wales, we will be meeting
local trade unionists. After
Cardiff we go to Bristol for
a week then to Oxford for a
two-weeks training course. I
will be sending another re-
port soon to tell you what I
have done and seen.

WALES

N the middle of June we
left London for Cardiff,
Wales, and immediately liked
the place, partly of course be-
cause meals were cheaper and
better prepared than in Lon-
don, and as we have to eat
in restaurants all the time,
the standard of food we find
affects our judgment of a
place. The. main reason for
our liking Cardiff though was
the friendliness of the people
there, we were made to feel
welcome wherever we went.

If you asked somebody on
the street for directions they
would often walk out of their
way to make sure you found
the place you were looking
for. We met with local trade
union leaders and visited in-
dustries in the area, the peo-
ple we met during the day
would generally invite us out
at night.

One of the places we visited
was the Treforest industrial
estate which is owned by the
government through the
Board of Trade. This indus-
trial estate, like others which
followed, was set up to bring
industry into depressed areas.

In the early 1900’s two
thirds of Wales working pop-

ulation was employed in the
iron, tinplate, and coai in-
dusties, any other manufact-
uring was designed to meet
the needs of those industries
and their workers. In the
years following the first world
war these industries declined,
particularly coal, and by 1924
the area was experiencing a
high rate of unemployment.
Unemployment over the area
as a whole rose to 30% of the
working force and in some
mining areas the unemploy-
ment rate rose as high as
80%. I met some miners who
were without work for ten
years.

The first official remedy
was to encourage migration to
the south of England where
conditions were better and
some work was available. In
all 400,000 out of a popula-
tion of 2,000,000 left Wales
in the years between 1921
and 1938.

Those who moved were of
course the younger and more
enterprising and what was
left behind was an aging com-
munity almost without hope.

OPINION

Eventually public opinion
came round to the idea that
it was better to move the
work to the workers, rather
than moving the workers to
work which left behind dying
communities and disrupted
family life. As a result of this
change in thinking industrial
estates were started, the first
one at Treforest.

To build an_ industrial
estate the government,
through the Board of Trade,
buys an area of land and
builds factories on it with
public funds, these factories
are then rented to industries
at attractive rates.

The first industries estab-
lished on the Treforest Indus-
trial estate were largely those
started by refugees from Eur-
ope who arrived in 1937-38.
By 1939, with the outbreak
of war, the government had
established several large arm-
ament plants in South Wales
and by 1943 there was virtu-
ally no unemployment in the
area.

NEW ACT

With the ending of war
there was fear that unemploy-
ment would return, however
the government was pledged
to use measures to “check the
development of localised un-
employment in particular in-
dustries and areas” and in
1945 they passed the Distri-
bution of Industry Act. This
act scheduled certain areas
as “Development Areas” or
areas where there was likely
to be special danger of unem-

ployment.

(TO BE CONTINUED)