Economic Background to the Coal Dispute

This Briefing Paper attempts to explain the economic forces behind the decline of the coal industry. The main findings (presented in the order in which the argument is developed) are:

• 1 Coal output has been declining throughout this century. This decline accelerated in the 1950s and 1960s when coal was faced with competition from oil.
• 2 The decline was arrested by the the oil price increases of the 1970s which have allowed coal to establish and maintain a price advantage over alternative fuels. Despite this, coal has not increased its market share over the past decade.
• 3 Because of energy conservation, in response to the price increases of the 1970s, total energy demand has fallen over the past ten years.
• 4 With coal holding a stable share of a static market, the output projections for the industry drawn up in the 1970s including those in the 1974 “Plan for Coal” are now totally outdated.
• 5 Even if total energy demand were to expand, there would not necessarily be increased demand for British coal, which is more expensive to produce at the margin than alternative sources of supply (from the US, South Africa and Australia).
• 6 Home-produced coal enjoys some natural protection from overseas competition because of high transport costs. In addition there is a tax on fuel oil and informal restrictions on imports. These partially insulate the domestic price of coal from changes in the world price.
• 7 The cost of producing coal has risen substantially in real terms since 1973-4, despite a major investment programme. Productivity has risen slightly faster than the national average, but wages and non-wage costs have risen very much faster.
• 8 The upward pressure on costs has come partly from the mineworkers' climb from twelfth to first or second place in the wages' league; and partly from the failure to close non-economic pits fast enough.
• 9 This pressure on costs meant that by 1981-2 less than half of the industry's total output was produced at profitable pits, which employed only 65,000 mineworkers.
• 10 There is a large tranche of marginally uneconomic pits which may be unprofitable one year but profitable another, and there is a strong case for keeping such pits open.
• 11 The number of pits which are profitable at the margin is very sensitive to movements in costs. I f mineworkers' wages had risen only in line with the national average for manufacturing over the period 1973-4 to 1981-2, the number of jobs in profitable pits would have been 95,000 rather than 65,000.
• 12 The subsidy per man in the most inefficient pit in 1981-2 was of the order of £14000. The subsidy per man in the marginal pit at break-even point for the industry as a whole was nearly £5000.
• 13 Under a cash limit system every pound spent on subsidising miners is a pound less available to spend elsewhere. Subsidising coal miners is a costly way of preserving jobs compared with alternatives.