The State mines made a bad start to-day, when, ignoring all appeals, 84,000 Yorkshire miners, representing about 60 per cent. of the total labour force of the pits in the county, stayed away from work. New Year's Day is a statutory holiday for miners, but because of the grave coal shortage, with its threat of large-scale unemployment in industry, appeals had been made to the miners to defer the holiday.
[...] National Coal Board leaders are bitterly disappointed by the absenteeism figures on the very day on which the mines were transferred to the State. The chairman of the Coal Board's North-Eastern Division (Major General Sir Noel G. Holmes) told me to-day: "I am very disappointed at to-day's attendance figures at the pits and I am sure my Board is too. I believe Yorkshire miners are superstitious about working on New Year's Day."
[...]
Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 2nd January 1947.
No comments:
Post a Comment