Conflict in the Coalfields

rapidly increasing productivity and falling manpower. Meanwhile wages are increasing much more slowly, yet the disease and accident rates rise higher and higher.

In 1959 658,200 men were working in the coal mines. The last available figures (published in July 1964) show that 517,000 men were left in the pits. The figure is dropping at a rate of 20,000 a year. At the same time mechanised output has more than doubled in recent years.

In 1959 31.3 per cent of the coal produced was gained by mechanised means. In 196364 the figure was 68.4 per cent. The percentage obtained by mechanised means is increasing at a rate of 10 per cent per yeat.

Output increase Output per man-shift has increased considerably. The output per man-shift for face workers over the last five years is—1959, 75 cwt.; 1960, 79.5 cwt.; 1961, 83.5 cwt.; 1962, 91.0 ewt; and 1963-64, 99.1 cwt.

This is an increase of almost 33 per cent in four years.

The output per man-shift of all mine workers also shows a marked increase, from 26.9 cwt. in 1959 to 33.4 cwt. in 1963-64.

In the same period earnings have increased by nothing like the same proportion.

Including the value of earnings in kind, face workers in 1959 were earning an average of 80s. and by 1963-64 this had gone up to only 95s. 7d. The average earnings for all miners, including payment in kind, were 63s. Ild. in 1959 and 76s. 9d. in 1963-64.

Much of this increased productivity has been due to a rapid extension of mechanisation. This can be illustrated most clearly by recent developments in the Midlands.

A coalface at the Ormonde Colliery in the East Midlands is operated by remote control and is producing 23 tons per man shift-four times the national average for similar machines without remote control.

The Coal Board plans another 18 remote-controlled units and anticipates that half its output will be mined this way in ten years' time.

Production will begin this year at Bevercotes Colliery, also in the East Midlands. This will be the first pit in the world to have full mechanical control from coalface to the surface.

Mechanical

changes Bevercotes was first planned with a labour force of 2,000 using conventional methods. Now fewer than 800 men will be employed and output will be higher.

When production started in 1959 at Lea Hall Colliery, in the West Midlands, it was There are but increasing number of MINERS:

accidents. The first of a series of three articles by JACK GALE and PETER JEFFRIES estimated that output would be one and a half million tons per year, two-thirds of which would be mined by conventional methods. Thirty coalfaces were to be used and 3,000 men employed.

Now, with mechanisation and concentrated production, it is expected to produce one and a half million tons this year with 1,000 fewer men.

In 1947 there were 60 pits in the West Midlands with an average output of 277,000 tons. By 1963 there were 35 pits with an average output of 420,000 tons.

From 1947 to 1958 output per man-shift rose on an average of less than 1 per cent per year in this region. Since then there has been an annual increase of more than 7 per cent.

Bigger leaps

In 1957, 3,376 men were employed for every million tons of coal produced. Five years later this had fallen to 2,615 men.

Over all Britain, productivity has increased by 23 percent in the last four years. Even bigger leaps can be expected now with the introduction of electronics and the development of machines like the Midget Miner, the first mining machine to be steered by nucleonics.

The latest available figures show that 1,661 power-loading machines are in use for coalgetting. (These include 625 Anderton shearers, 295 Trepanners, 193 Rapid Ploughs and 95 Trepan Shearers.)

When the next Coal Board Report is published (probably in July this year) it will certainly show a rapid extension of mechanisation.

Machines

developed For instance, at the end of 1963 there were 33 ripping machines in • use. There are probably twice or three times as many now. At the end of 1963 there were 10 stable hole machines. There are probably 40 such machines in use by now.

Experiments are well under way with Remotely Operated Longwall Faces (ROLF). Here, the mining equipment on the face is controlled by one man sitting at an operating panel in an adjacent roadway.

There is also the development of the Collins Miner-a remote-controlled cutter-loader for extracting coal from thin seams.

New types of coal-sensing equipment and obstruction detectors are being developed.

However, the speed at which a mechanised coalface can advance is limited by the time required to complete the necessary ancillary operations in the roadhead adjacent to the coalface. The Coal Board is anxious to mechanise these operations, especially in order to speed up the advance of the roadways and stable holes.

'Million ton' pits Work is being done on power-loading machines which will be able to make their own stable holes. They are also developing hydraulic drives for conveyors and coalface equipment.

Already 18 per cent of the faces in production are operating on the basis of powered self-advancing roof supports. These enable the faces to operate double-shift or even treble-shift coaling. (Traditional methods allow only one or two shifts coal-getting in every three, the others being used for preparation.)

Thus the development over recent years has been to increase productivity at the more 'efficient' pits, to work coalfaces more intensively and to close down 'uneconomic' pits.

In the 15 months up to MACAUA ICATInAI. 18 per cent of production faces onerate MEUNANISH I IUN: with March 1964, average weekly saleable output per colliery increased by nearly 9 percent from 5,600 tons to 6,100 tons.

There were in this period 23 'million ton' pits-ten in Yorkshire, nine in the East Midlands, three in Northumberland and Durham and one in the West Midlands (i.e., pits producing over one million tons per year).

Fewer coalfaces are being worked each year, while mechanisation enables those that are being worked to be worked on more than one shift a day.

Last year's Coal Board Report shows that in 1961, 629 longwall machines were working one shift, 626 were working two shifts and 96 were working three shifts.

Method study By March 1964, 505 longwall machines were working one shift, 770 were working two shifts and 207 were working three or four shifts. This year's report will certainly show a further increase in multi-shift working. Meanwhile, average daily pithead output from longwall faces is increasing by 14 per cent per year.

This is what lies behind the increase in method study in the pits. There have been at least 3,000 method studies carried out in recent years and these are designed, according to a Coal Board statement, 'to raise productivity between the coalface and the surface so that the full potential of improvements in mechanisation and in the concentration of colliery working can be achieved'.

Over 500 of these studies have been on work measurement techniques for determining norms of performance for teams employed on powerloading. Needless, to say, the National Union of Mineworkers has : COoperated in this speed-up process!

Meanwhile, closed-circuit television is being introduced at selected pits and everywhere miners complain that Deputies and Overmen are becoming constant 'production pushers' Miners' health Who benefits from this increased productivity?

It has already been pointed out that increases in wages lag far behind increases in productivity, despite the promise made by Lord Robens at last year's conference of the National Union of Mineworkers.

Robens said: 'All my life I powered self-advancing supports.

have said that high wages must come as a result of increasing advancement in industry and new techniques?

A later article will deal with wages in detail. Here we want to deal with the effect on the health of miners.

X-ray checks have now revealed that 12.1 per cent— about one in eight- of all men examined had some degree of pneumoconiosis.

Dust diseases In some areas the figures are much worse than this. In South Wales, for example, 25.2 per cent of the men examined had got pneumoconiosis-more than one in every four! This does not include all those sufferers from 'chronic bronchitis.

The simple fact is that no effective dust suppression process has been discovered.

More than one man in every hundred examined was discovered to be suffering from progressive massive fibrosis. In the South Western Region (Wales) this figure was as high as 3.6 per cent.

Intensified mechanisation, the concentration of production, and now the increased use of electricity in the vicinity of the coalface, has led to new ventilation problems for which no satisfactory solution has yet been found.

It has also been realised— somewhat belatedly-that excessive noise is a cause of deafness, and this has become another occupational hazard for miners.

Accidents are also on the increase, even with fewer men in the pits.

Casualties per 100,000

man-shifts worked show a startling increase in the last four years. The figures are: 1961, 148.33;

1962, 161.8; 1963-64, 180.72. The last Coal Board report showed 254,063 accidents in 15 months, 308 of them fatal.

This, then, is the picture of mechanisation in the British coalfields. Already more than 72 per cent of the coal produced is power-loaded.

Robens told the last National Union of Mineworkers conference that he wanted to mechanise every coalface possible, and to increase the average working time of the machines by 15 minutes per shift.

No wonder he urged miners to throw away their 'old conceptions' of militancy with the pick and shovel. 'Accept new thinking with the new machines,' says Robens.

This is now extremely important to Robens, and the role of the right wing and Communist Party leaders of the miners' union in holding back and misleading the miners cannot be over-emphasized.

For the most important result of mechanisation is that production in the 15 months ending March 1964 was 247.5 million tons. This is equivaNewsletter Correspondent and will certainly have up since then.

Yet Robens told the 1964 National Union of Mincworkers conference that he wanted to maintain production around 200 million tons a year.

Indeed, some sections of big business think this is too much and want a limit of 180 million tons a year. This figure of 180 million tons is 38 million tons less than was being produced a year ago, a loss equivalent to the jobs of at least 120,000 miners.

Fewer men

The important fact is that the level of production required by the Coal Board has already been reached and probably exceeded. The purpose of mechanisation now is not to produce more coal, but produce the same amount more cheaplythat is, with fewer men.

Thus, the case of Lea Hall Colliery, mentioned above, is highly significant. After mechanisation this pit did not produce more coal, but produced the same amount with 1,000 fewer men.

Moreover, since there were already 23 'million ton' pits last year, this means that one-eighth of all the coal required in a year is already being produced from these 23 pits.

Thus, the intensified drive to mechanise every possible face can only mean an attack on miners' jobs and conditions in the coming period.

How is this affecting wages? What is the role of the Labour government? What should the attitude of miners be to this government? These vital questions will be answered in later articles in this series.