DOMESTIC SERVANTS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 47, Issue 2663, 30 August 1937, Page 2

DOMESTIC SERVANTS

HONOURED IN NORWAY. In an effort to try and improve the status of servants, and so persuade a better type of girl to adopt a domestic career, a woman’s society, in London, recently decided to adopt the term “domestician,” states an exchange. This may, or may not, have the desired effect, but there is one country where domestic service is regarded as an honoured career, and whose girls make the best servants in the world. That is Norway. The Norwegian girls have their own trade union, which looks after their interests, and a domestic servant is as much a person of consequence as a shop employee or a factory hand. Naturally domesticated, the Norwegian is trained from early years in the art of housewifery, with the most up-to-date appliances, for water power makes electricity so cheap in Norway that they often do not turn off the public-room lights in the daytime, and every little farm-house has its electrical equipment. The . Norwegian girl is ambitious, and her Mecca is the United States, where the Scandinavian servant obtains the best wages and living conditions in the world. Many go to England and work for board and nominal wages in order to learn the language, and London and the big provincial cities each have their little Scandinavian colony. Last year the Norwegian servants petitioned their Government to grant them a ten-hour day exclusive of meal-times, all other time to be paid as overtime. They are also paid board wages for a fortnight’s holiday annually, and have their time off and pay fixed by local boards. They are not haughtily demanding, or humble, but have a proper appreciation of the value of their work to the community, and pride in a job well done.