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
The testimony of the forewomen is to the same effect. A. a forewoman,
used to work often till 10, 11, or 12 at night, sometimes all night.
Sometimes she was obliged to keep her girls all night when there was
work that had to be finished, but usually she gave them a rest the next
day. She thinks it a very good thing that they should not be allowed to
work all night; the work is piecework and long hours don't do any good,
for they mean that you work less next day: if you work all night, then
you are so tired that you have to take a day off; you have gained
nothing. She used to find that so herself.
B. a forewoman, thought the Factory Acts a very good thing. Girls
grumbled if they had to stop till 8, and she never heard of any of them
wanting to stay longer. "If you work till 8 for many weeks you get used
up; there is no change in your life, and as soon as you get home you
have to go to bed, you are so tired."
C. is a forewoman. As a girl she used to work from 8.30 a.m. to 9 or 10
at night every day from September to Christmas. She had to stay till 2
a.m. one night and come again just the same next day; she had to work
from 3 a.m. one Good Friday morning and sometimes had to come to work at
1 on Sunday mornings. This nightwork was only occasional, but she
thinks it a very good thing that it has been stopped; she never found it
pay; the girls were so tired the next day.
Another forewoman gave it as her deliberate opinion that when overtime
is worked the piece workers do not make more as a rule, for they get so
tired that if they stay late one night, they work less the next day.
This is the unanimous view held by the forewomen, and it comes with
considerable force from them, as it is they who have to arrange to get
work done somehow within a certain time. They are the people who have to
put on the pressure, and are in such a position as to see how any
particular system of getting work done answers.
[Sidenote: Exceptions.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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