Word: heaths
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...sweaters inside their chill homes and offices and scurried at night through streets that had been curiously darkened, the country last week shifted to a three-day work week in yet another effort to conserve coal supplies and electrical power. The austerity measure, decreed by Prime Minister Edward Heath last month after Britain's coal miners refused to work overtime pending a new wage settlement, means pay cuts of up to 40% for 15 million British workers, massive unemployment, and sharp curtailments in industrial production...
Criticism of Heath. The costs in lost production and exports, said Benn, will be ten times that-or close to $1 billion a week. That is a loss that Britain cannot afford, since its balance of payments deficit for 1973 is already a staggering $5.2 billion. Said Sir Michael Clapham, president of the Confederation of British Industry: "A three-day week is pretty near disastrous for a trading nation. The average industry can't break even operating at 65%. So pretty well every firm will be taking a loss." As the consequences of the shortened week began...
...Heath staunchly maintains that the nation has only enough coal supplies to sustain the three-day work week. He says that the whole problem would be solved if the coal miners would accept the government's $101 million wage-in crease package-the maximum allowed under its Phase III wage and price controls. That would represent a 16.5% wage rise for the miners, who average between $66 and $92 a week; they are asking for a 33% rise. Heath says that such a pay increase would be inflationary and would tempt workers in other industries to demand similar boosts...
...possible, of course, that Heath may have politics as well as economics on his mind: he could be maneuvering to back the miners down by exaggerating their role in the crisis; at the same time he could be trying to boost his public support by avoiding unpopular measures like an across-the-board raise in income taxes. Thus if the miners fail to come to terms, Heath still has one last option: he could call new elections and seek a vote of confidence...
...Edward Heath's Conservative government is disliked by the miners. Says Joe Wheelan, an officer at the National Union of Mineworkers in Mansfield, a mining town near Nottingham: "Heath has love and a kiss on the cheek for the oil sheiks, but he has a slap in the face for the British miner." Adds a miner's wife: "Brother Heath's making it seem that if the miners lift their ban, then petrol rationing will be unnecessary. I just can't believe that. We're being used as scapegoats. The only thing he hasn...