On a Three-Day Work Week

As 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.

Except for such essentials as transportation, food supplies and medical services, half the country's businesses and industries will work Mondays through Wednesdays, and the other half Thursdays through Saturdays. Shops and offices that can operate without using more than their alloted share of electricity are permitted to remain open. All over London last week, gaslamps and candles lighted counters as shoppers thronged to take advantage of new year's sales. One furrier's shop on King's Road put up a hand-lettered sign reading WE ARE OPEN SIX DAYS A WEEK--BY CANDLE POWER, BATTERY POWER AND WILL POWER.

The impact of the first short week was somewhat alleviated by the fact that for the first time, New Year's Day this year was a public holiday in Britain.

Nonetheless, 730,000 workers were laid off last week and queued up at unemployment offices to register for government benefits. The number is expected to swell to 3,000,000 if the crisis lasts until the end of January. According to Anthony Wedgwood Benn, Labor's shadow cabinet Minister of Trade and Industry, the social security costs in such an event alone would run to $92 million a week.

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 to be felt by workers and businessmen alike, criticism of Heath's tough policy mounted. Accusing Heath of "gravely misleading the nation," Benn charged that the Prime Minister was "using the dispute with the miners as an excuse for sharp and massive deflation."

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. The miners responded by pointing out that the fact they must work overtime to keep the nation afloat indicates the inability of the National Coal Board to maintain an adequate working force because of present low wages. Asked if a settlement by the government was not preferable to massive industrial dislocations, Employment Secretary William Whitelaw declared last week: "If one talks about standing on Phase III, it rather looks as if one is standing on the bridge of a ship at all costs for no particular reason.

What is the reason? It is to prevent ourselves as a country from going to rip-roaring inflation."

Meanwhile, a passel of other unions have settled within the pay code's limits, including 18,000 electrical-power engineers who had refused to work overtime and weekends. Still, there was fear that British unions, which have a reputation for striking at the drop of a hat, might stage a general strike. Said George Evans of the huge Transport and General Workers' Union: "Feelings are at a boiling point. You cannot slash a man's wages by 40% and expect to get away with it."

But Actor Robert Morley, British Airways' exuberant television salesman of England's illimitable charms ("We'll take good care of you"), wryly advised his countrymen to enjoy the shortened work week while it lasts. "For years now, the planners have been assuring us that before long a man would not be required to work more than two or three days a week," Morley wrote in a letter to the London Times. "Now that this blissful state of affairs has arrived, no one seems to relish the fact. Everyone sits around working out on used envelopes how much less cash is coming in. But against the ten pounds or so loss experienced by the average worker must be set freedom, happiness, getting to know the neighbors, even one's own kids, discovering art and life."

qed qed qed

As if Britain's industrial crisis were not trouble enough, the country last week once more became a battleground for Arab-Israeli tension. In the wake of a report by the Beirut weekly al Liwa that Palestinian guerrillas and the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army had agreed to carry out joint acts of terrorism in Britain, a prominent British Zionist was shot in a bold attack. J.

Edward Sieff, 68, president of the Marks & Spencer department-store chain, was wounded in the face by a masked gunman who forced his way into Sieffs London home.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the shooting, but at week's end police had found no trace of the gunman.

Police said that the arrest of four persons suspected of arms smuggling, including an American girl, Allison Thompson, 18, of Santa Barbara, Calif., was unrelated to the Sieff case. Speculation by police was that the group was connected to a plot to kill or kidnap the Moroccan ambassador in London. Police said that they recovered five automatic pistols and 150 rounds of ammunition from Miss Thompson after she landed at London's Heathrow Airport on a flight from Los Angeles.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.