"Women in the engineering industry are to receive equal pay if they do men's jobs, but only after 32 weeks. Wages of women who have to be supervised will be subject to negotiations."
What lies behind this bald statement? asks Jill Adam in the "News-Chronicle." Well, say you're a munitions girl and you've done a nice job of welding on a depth charge, and a man helps you to lift it down. Do you, or do you not, have deducted from your wages the man's pay for the minute (or is it half a minute) it-has taken him to help you?
This is the type of knotty problem which Miss Lees, one of the devoted women officers of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers, daily and hourly thrashes out with employers.
At the end of a hard day, seeing employers and then waiting about for the end of the day shift, she tells the girls what her successes have been:
"And you, Flossie, what are you getting?"
"Thirty-two and six a week."
"Well, now i'll be thirty-five shillings."
These girls earn their pay packet like this:
Mrs. Robinson came from four years' unemployment on depressed Tyneside to the South. Now she and her husband work on munitions. She is soft-voiced. auburn, proud of being a good housewife.
7 am. Gets up, does beds, puts sandwiches ready for husband (he's on night shift), takes id. bus to factory from own little house on outskirts of town.
8 a.m. At work. Off with frock, on with long-sleeved boiler suit. In hot weather, bathing dress only underneath.
Mrs. R. wears goggles, too. "They shut you away, and your thoughts are all to yourself. You think and think—sometimes I think of things that happened long ago, often of my brother. I think of him in the destroyer, and me making depth charges. It's funny.
"But noisy! My ears never stop ringing, even in my dreams. Canteen's the same, only it's the wireless on full blast and all the girls talking to drown it."
10 a.m. Break. Eat sandwiches or cake packed at home.
10.10 a.m. Back to work. Fumes and blue smoke hang in the air, make eyes smart, throats hoarse, voices husky. Hands are black with oil, steel splinters lodge under the skin.
12 noon. Dinner hour. Dash home, heat and eat dinner prepared overnight: liver and onions, potatoes, cold pudding.
1 p.m. Back at work. The girl makers of ring bearings for aeroplanes work to a sharp speed 7530 pin. On with break for tea till off with overalls and home, shopping on the way.
7 p.m. Home. Prepare and eat supper: something quick.
8 pin. onwards. Wash up, prepare and cook midday dinner for the morrow. Tidy up. Clean one room, or set sheets to soak. "The rest of the evening I have to myself," says Mrs. R. slyly.
She does all the washing at home.
Weekends, clean the house thoroughly, finish washing and ironing. Pictures or dance on Saturday. Church Sunday evening.
Mrs. Baxter has a kid. Pays a woman 10s. a week to look after her.
"There ought to be a nursery school in the town," she says. "More than one. There'll be more like me soon, as the men go. The women couldn't cover expenses on the men's Army pay without working. Id be glad to know somewhere good to leave my girl And you know Edna, her kid had a great bruise on him when she got home one evening, She reckons the foster mother give him it. Well, that wouldn't happen, not at a nursery school."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.