EFFICIENT WORKERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 107, 1 November 1941, Page 9

EFFICIENT WORKERS

WOMEN IN FORESTRY

SERVICE

RUGBY, October 30,

Increased use of women in felling and peeling timber is mentioned in the latest report of the House of Commons Select Committee which examines national expenditure in wartime.

The report says that in British timber camps a "home labour force has been largely recruited from men and girls who have never done such work before. Girls whom the Committee saw working on one site had only recently been shopgirls, hairdressers, and, domestic servants, and one forewoman had been a ballet mistress. They are chiefly employed in peeling the felled timber, but they also fell some of the smaller trees. Though their production varies, and in all cases is naturally somewhat lower than that of men, it is stated to be efficient."

The Committee recommends that a women's forestry service should bej organised on the same lines as the women's land army, and urges the speeding up of recreation facilities and the improvement of hygienic con-s ditions at foreistry camps, which necessarily are situated in remote places.— 8.0. W.