The Munitions Tribunals, like leaving certificates, were a source of much annoyance to working women. Complaints were made that the representatives of the Ministry of Munitions had no understanding of the labor point of view, so that there was always a majority against the employes. Instances were given in which the tribunals refused certificates to a woman receiving 10s. ($2.40) a week, though she had a chance to double her wages, and to girls working seventy to eighty hours weekly several miles from home, while a factory having eight hour shifts had opened close at hand. Fines, unlike those imposed by employers, did not have to be “reasonable” in the legal sense of the word, and their size was not known to the workers beforehand. An employe summoned before a tribunal lost at least a half day’s and sometimes a full day’s work, or several hours of sleep if a night worker. Previous to January, 1916, women workers might be obliged to appear before a tribunal composed entirely of men. But by the amending act, as the “direct outcome of a scandalous case” in which three girls who had left their jobs because of “gross insult” were obliged to explain the circumstances with no woman present,[112] it was required that at least one of the assessors representing the employes should be a woman in every case in which women were involved.
Whatever the justice of the employes’ contentions, certainly the decisions rendered by the tribunals during their first few months of activity, for which alone figures are available, were generally unfavorable to the workers. From the beginning of their work to November 27, 1916, 814 cases involving 3,672 persons were heard against employes. Convictions against 2,423 of these were secured, and fines amounting to £2,235 were imposed. Against employers there were but eighty-six cases involving ninety-four persons, fifty-six persons convicted, and a total in fines of £290. Out of 3,014 requests for leaving certificates, only 782 were granted.
CHAPTER X
Wages
Perhaps no one factor in the working conditions of women is more vital to their welfare than the wages they receive. A study of the changes in wages brought about by the war is therefore of special importance. Ordinarily women seldom do precisely the same work as men, and they ordinarily receive wages not more than half as high. Did the difference continue when the women took up men’s jobs? The fear that the women would lower the rates established by the men’s trade unions was, as we have seen, probably the main reason for the opposition of male trade unionists to “dilution.” In what measure was the women’s demand for “equal pay for equal work” attained? The replacement of enlisted men by women and the extensive use of women in the manufacture of munitions invested women’s work as never before with the character of a national service, and this also led to a demand for more adequate wage standards. In considering the subject of wages it should always be kept in mind that, roughly speaking, at the beginning of the war wages and prices were about half as high in England as in the United States, though the difference in prices was not so great during 1917 and 1918.
Governmental Wage Regulation
in the Munitions Industry
All three of the factors enumerated above—namely, public recognition of their services to the state, the women’s demand for “equal pay for equal work” and the effort of the men’s unions to maintain wage standards—seem to have played a part in forcing governmental regulation of the wages of women workers. Munitions work was of course the storm center of disputes throughout the war.
Many complaints were made of the inadequate wages paid the first women to be employed on munitions work. An official report[113] admits that women munitions makers taking up men’s jobs in the industry before the Treasury Agreement permitting substitution was made in March, 1915, were paid only 2½d. (5 cents) to 4d. (8 cents) an hour. Twelve to fifteen shillings weekly ($2.88-$3.60) was said to be the usual pay for women in Manchester and on the Clyde. In October, 1914, a leading armament firm hired a number of women to take the place of skilled and semi-skilled men in shell making at 15 per cent lower wages than were paid the men.[114]
The first attempt to secure equal pay for the women who replaced men was made in February, 1915, through the “Shells and Fuses Agreement” of the “Committee on Production,” which provided for equal pay on skilled work. But most of the operations on which women were being substituted were unskilled or semi-skilled and on the latter the employers’ federation ordered the usual women’s rates. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers, which had assented to the agreement, now awoke to conditions and protested, but in the words of two students of British labor during the war, “it was too late.” They “never again caught up with the situation. Multitudes of women were poured into the engineering trades at a low wage scale.”[115]
The next effort of the trade unionists was the securing of a clause in the Treasury Agreement in March to the effect that “the relaxation of existing demarcation restrictions or admission of semi-skilled or female labor shall not affect adversely the rates paid for the job.” Miss Sylvia Pankhurst immediately sent an inquiry to Lloyd George, asking for an interpretation of this somewhat ambiguous statement. She received the reply:
Dear Miss Pankhurst: The words which you quote would guarantee that women undertaking the work of men would get the same piece-rates as men were receiving before the date of this agreement. That, of course, means that if the women turn out the same quantity of work as men employed on the same job, they will receive exactly the same pay.