June 15.
Altogether five and a-half million workers will be thrown idle when the engineers down tools to-morrow.
The employers proposed a reduetion, amounting to 3s. a week in the wages of time-workers and 7} per cent. in. the case of pieceworkers, to operate from to-morrow, followed by similar cuts in July, and a further reductions of 12} per cent. for time-workers and 7) per cent. for piece-workers in September. The workers are willing to accept the June and July reductions, but they object to the further reductions in September.
The negotiations for the settlement of the strike in the cotton i@tlustry are not making progress, although a difference of only 11d. in the pound now separates the two parties. The proprietors have refused a suggestion to submit the difference to arbitration.
The first result announced in the ballot of coal-miners on the question of returning to work on the owners' terms is announced, viz., at the Alfreton Collieries in Derbyshire. Only half the men voted, the result being 134 votes in favour or acceptance, and 137 against.—Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.