THE EXPERIENCES OF A VOLUNTEER WORKER. (To THE EDITOR OF
THE " SPECTATOR."] venture to think that the enclosed communication, which I have received from a friend who is a volunteer munition worker, limy interest your readers. He is a fair-minded man and not given to passing hasty judgments on his fellows.—I am, Sir, &c.,
" I leave here at 5.30 in the morning, and generally get back at about 8.30 in the evening. Then I have my supper and go to bed as soon after as I decently can, if I have not gone to sleep already. I" am lending the life of an ordinary workman, and have my overalls on all the time I am away from my lodgings. There are a few nice experiences and many nasty ones, though now I have settled down I get on very comfortably. I am making a part of the —; no one outside the fitting-shop ever sees a whole one, and they don't liko you to go round even in your spare time to see what other people are doing; in fact, it does not do to appear too keen on the work. I have one of the two best machines of their darts in the works, and the job I am doing is reckoned a very good one; that is, one which requires a lot of care and accuracy. . I have had several slight brushes with the Union men. They really are extraordinary. First it was because I began to work a tew minutes before time one afternoon—' giving the masters ainuething.' Then it was because I began too soon after the hooter had gone; and several times I have been spoken to because I happen to turn out things a little faster than they do. You must wet think that I am ` sweating ' all the time, but when once you have got hold of a job it is easy to turn out things at a good dent faster pare than the Union men do. You can't help it; in Let, most of the volunteers here (there are thirty or route) can and do turn out work a good deal quicker than the Union men on the same job. Of course, the fact that the [piece of mechanism I am engaged upon] is about as urgent as any war work has ever been . . . does not weigh with them at all.
This brings me to the strike. I don't know whether you have seen much about it in the papers, but there has been trouble in the engineering line for some time apparently, and several of the other large works about here came out ' on Tuesday. We followed suit on Wednesday. We all turned up as usual at 6 o'clock. Then the Union men held meetings (volunteers were not allowed to attend), and during the morning they all walked out. We worked on till the machinery stopped. The bosses' and gaffers' were powerless, of course. As we did not go out the men sent in a deputation asking for us to be sent out, and for the women to come out too. The women were sent home and we were told to go into another shop, not really belonging to the firm, but controlled by the Ministry of Munitions. There were many mutterings about us by the Unionists; ` conscientious objectors ' figured largely in their execrations; yet the reason why they are on strike is that they have been called up for the Army. The taking of skilled men, though they may be young and fit, seems to be the sore point. Large numbers of men don't want to strike, and do not know why they are out. I believe they get no strike pay, as it is an unofficial strike. When we went into the other shop we asked for a job, and were told to go and empty six ten-ton wagons or coal. This is another beastly part of it. The foremen, or some of them, seem to he as prejudiced against us as the men, and one of them thought he would take the chance of getting a dirty job done cheaply, though he waited till there were six or eight volunteer turners only in the works to get the job done, instead of getting it done during the three weeks it had been waiting by the numerous labourers whose job it is. I lay stress on turners, as _the doing by men of one trade of the work of another is anathema. The forbidding of it being done is the cause of endless delay and waste of time throughout the whole works. If I happen to want a little woodwork or plumbing job done I have to wait for the carpenter or plumber to do it, perhaps wait half a day, when I could do it myself in ten minutes. We refused to do the coal-heaving, and have been rolling 9.2 shells about, sorting them and piling them up; then being told they were wrong and taking them down and rolling them somewhere else, though the foremen were matching us all the time. The shells are mostly in the rough, and weigh about 3 cwt., I should think. We did this from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. to-day and yesterday. I don't know whether we shall have to alter them to-morrow. I rather think they are right this time.
I came up here thinking I would see what the British workman was like and judge him fairly. He is much worse than I had thought, pig-headed to a degree, prejudiced and very slow of understanding. Nor have I ever been in a place which was so full of ' wire-pulling,' and the wages part of the business is most complicated. You hardly ever know whether your pay at the end of the week is right or not; but you can generally be sure that you have not got some that you are entitled to. If the job you are doing has a price on it, and you can do so many in a week that your earnings are more than your time wages, then you can keep the difference; but you find that the price is cut down if you work too hard. Or again, if you have no price on the job, you are entitled to ` time and a quarter ' on it if it is war work. None of the volunteers has had any ` time and a quarter ' yet, and practically no bonus, though the majority of them have been working quite up to the standard."
[The last paragraph of this letter is, we are sure, much too severe on,the British workman. The trouble is that he has been deliberately taught to believe that the less he produces the more he benefits himself and his fellows. From that curse-scattering assumption come all the evils that the volunteer worker enumerates. It is greatly to be hoped that the views of the non- Union workers will obtain a fair hearing from Mr. Lloyd George's seven new Labour Commissions. We say this, not because we want to " down " the Unions—we hold them to be as necessary as does, we are glad to see, Sir Albert Stanley—but because we do not want them to be debauched and ruined by a monopoly of power or by the maddening gift of aristocratic privilege.--En. Spectator.]
Previous page
