Girls in Factories

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 266, 8 November 1941, Page 5

Girls in Factories

1 IRRESPONSIBLE CREATURES * ’

WELLINGTON, Nov. 5.

“ Girls are the most irresponsible creatures imaginable, yet in these days we are entirely at their mercy,” said a Wellington factory manager with a sigh when asked whether the Auckland Placement Officer’s statement that factory girls of 16 could .earn and were earning as much as £8 a week held good tor Wellington. The manager doubted whether many girls were getting as much as that, although no doubt a few might be, but he agreed with the statement that £o a week was a common wage. Girls in clothing factories, for instance, were taken on at a wage of £3 10s or £3 15s a week —a 40-hour week—'but by working overtime at piecework they were enabled to earn £5 quite easily, and perhaps 50 per cent, did so. “But are they worth it ‘l No, not by a long chalk in many cases,” he went on. * • But we have got to take them on. Many factories are engaged in the production of essentials and nave a definite output to maintain. Too often the girls are not there after pay day, ana too often they work for just as many days as it pleases them and then go oft' to spend their earnings. Production for war purposes under such conditions becomes a nightmare.”

It was not to be supposed, continued the manager, that all girls were tarred with the same -brush, out his remarks applied to a percentage which -was large enough to be very aggravating.