The Coal Mines Regulation Act 1887, section 12 (1), enacts ‘Where the amount of wages paid to any of the persons employed in a mine depends on the amount of mineral gotten by them, those persons shall be paid according to the actual weight gotten by them of the mineral contracted to be gotten, and the mineral gotten by them shall be truly weighed at a place as near to the pit mouth as is reasonably practicable: Provided that nothing in this section shall preclude the owner, agent, or manager of the mine from agreeing with the persons employed in the mine that deductions shall be made in respect of stones or substances other than the mineral contracted to be gotten, which shall be sent out of the mine with the mineral contracted to be gotten, or in respect of any tubs, baskets, or hutches being improperly filled in those cases where they are filled by the getter of the mineral or his drawer or by the person immediately employed by him; such deductions being determined in such special mode as may be agreed upon between the owner, agent, or manager of the mine on the one hand and the persons employed in the mine on the other, or by some person appointed in that behalf by the owner, agent, or manager, or (if any checkweigher is stationed for this purpose as hereinafter mentioned) by such person and such checkweigher, or in case of difference by a third person to be mutually agreed on by the owner, agent, or manager of the mine on the one hand and the persons employed in the mine on the other, or in default of agreement appointed by a chairman of a Court of Quarter Sessions within the jurisdiction of which any shaft of the mine is situate.’
Miners in a coal mine agreed that deductions from the ‘mineral gotten,’ i.e., the total contents of the hutch, should be made by the weigher and checkweigher in accordance with the above-quoted section. The weigher proposed to deduct half a hundredweight a hutch, an amount ascertained by taking an average of a number of hutches crow-picked and from time to time checked in the same way. The checkweigher refused to agree to any deduction save what was ascertained by crow-picking each individual hutch, an impracticable method which would have stopped the working of the mine. He maintained that the weigher’s proposal was a ‘special mode’ only available by agreement between the owners and miners. The miners refused to call in an arbiter. The owners continued to pay the wages on the amount ascertained after deducting the half-hundredweight, a deduction which on the evidence was too little.
In an action by a miner to recover the additional sum he would have received had there been no deduction, held ( rev. judgment of the Second Division), (1) that the miner was only entitled to wages on the mineral ‘contracted to be gotten;’ (2) that in the absence of a ‘special mode’ the weigher and checkweigher could adopt any mode; (3) that the miner had failed to prove anything to be due him, and consequently the action fell to be dismissed.
Judges:
Viscount Finlay, Viscount Cave, Lord Dunedin, Lord Atkinson, and Lord Moulton
Citations:
[1920] UKHL 410, 57 SLR 410
Links:
Jurisdiction:
Scotland
Employment
Updated: 22 October 2022; Ref: scu.631526
