Word: three-day
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...Britons bundled up in 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...
...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 to be felt by workers and businessmen alike, criticism of Heath...
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...
...many people will be killed on the nation's highways over holiday periods. But in the past six weeks it has got two welcome surprises. For the four-day Thanksgiving weekend, the N.S.C. had predicted 625 to 725 traffic deaths; the final count was 542, down from 679 the year before. Then, over the four-day Christmas weekend, the council counted 520 deaths, v. 595 in the three-day 1972 period. It was the lowest four-day Christmas figure since...
Manser does opine that if the three-day week lasts only a month or six weeks into 1974, industry can probably recover the lost output in the remainder of the year-provided that the Arabs decide to make enough oil available...