Women in the Printing Trades: A Sociological Study.
General
Women in the Printing Trades: A Sociological Study.
Printing industry -- Great Britain; Women -- Employment -- Great Britain; Women printers -- Great Britain; Working class women -- Great Britain
LEGISLATION.--In no case had women been turned away because of
restrictive legislation. A certain amount of folding and stitching has
to be done by men at night, and he would say that about 2 or 3 men were
employed at this for about one hour five nights in the week. Sometimes
the folding was not ready till 11 p.m., and the men had to hang about
before. The manager thought that the chief grievance of the Factory Acts
was that if only one woman in a department was employed overtime, one of
the thirty legal nights was thereby used up. The manager thought that it
was forty-eight nights you might work overtime, and seemed surprised on
looking up the notices to find that it was thirty only. He approved of
Factory Legislation on the whole, and thought that women had benefited
by it. Personally, he would like to see all overtime abolished by law
for men and women. Men worked worse next day when they had had to sit up
at night. Public bodies were the worst offenders in the matter, "They
have no consciences." The forewoman of the folding and sewing, where
overtime was worked, said that her girls disliked overtime very much;
and she did not think it worth while working them, as they could do less
work next day in consequence. She had much rather that the men did it at
night. She and the manager agreed that in places where women did not
make a decent wage by working ordinary hours they might want to work at
night. As to the effect Factory Legislation had upon the diverting of
work from the home to the workshop, or _vice versâ_, the manager thought
that the tendency had been for work to come in to the factory. There
used to be much more home work.
MEN AND WOMEN.--According to the manager, there is a hard and fast line
drawn by the various Societies in London as to what a woman may or may
not do.
In _Bookbinding_ of all descriptions she is practically confined to
folding and sewing. She may not touch a glue brush or do any putting of
paper books or magazines into paper covers.
In the provinces, on the other hand, the rules of the Consolidated
Societies are different. A woman may do flush binding (_i.e._, books
whose covers are cut on a level with the leaves and which have no
"turnings in") up and foolscap size, two quires. Hence women do diaries,
etc. In certain works at Tonbridge women are set to do this.
_Litter-press Printing._--This firm had never tried female compositors.
They had 100 men. If they tried to introduce women, all the men would go
out and "you'd have a hornet's nest." The idea of paying women at the
same rate as men struck them as ridiculous. "They would never be worth
as much because they stay such a little time." They might some day try
women compositors in their country establishment.
_Feeding Printing Machines._--They might not employ women on platen
machines because of the Union, but were going to try them on smallish
letter-press machines. The Union had no objection to that.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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