Women -- Employment -- Great Britain; Women labor union members -- Great Britain; Working class women -- Great Britain
Are women who replace men to be paid merely the wages that women of the
same grade of skill usually are paid? In that case they will be
undercutting men, and preparing a position of extreme difficulty after the
war. Or are the women to be paid the same wages as the men they replace?
They certainly should, wherever the work is the same. As we have seen, in
many cases the women do not do exactly the same work as men, and indeed in
the interests of their health and efficiency it is often highly desirable
they should not do quite the same. It may be quite easy, _e.g._, for a
woman to cut off yards of cloth to sell across the counter, but it may
happen that the man she replaces not only did this but also at intervals
handled heavy bales of goods which are beyond her strength. In such cases
as this a rearrangement of work with due regard to relative strength is
desirable, and a rigid equality of wages should not be insisted on.
Organisation of all women-workers employed to replace men is become a more
pressing need than ever, to ensure first that women should not be paid
less than men merely because they are women; second, that women should not
have work thrust upon them that is an injurious strain on their
constitutions; third, that the future interests of the men now serving in
the field should not be disregarded. The point insisted on in Chapter
IV., that women need not only to be enrolled in Unions but to have a voice
in the management and control where they are organised along with men, has
been made plainer than ever. So strongly was this felt at Manchester that
a special committee was formed for the protection of women's interests in
munition work, and for co-operation with the interested trade unions in
any movement towards the organisation of the women. A special campaign for
the organisation of munition workers was initiated and carried on by the
National Federation of Women Workers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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