From one point of view it would not seem essential that women should receive men’s rates if “substitution by rearrangement” has taken place. From another viewpoint, however, if the lower rates decrease the total labor cost of the job, as is almost always the case, the danger remains that lower rates for women will pull down the men’s wage standards. More obvious is the menace to the men’s rates if women are not generally inferior as workers, and if they are employed at a lower wage scale under the other forms of substitution.
The evidence obtainable on the relative wages received by men workers and by the women who replaced them shows that just that danger exists. While most of the women substitutes have gained an improved financial position, they have not, on the whole, reached a plane of economic equality with the men whom they have replaced. In January, 1916, the Labour Gazette, looking back over 1915, said that, “the extensive substitution of women and young persons for men has tended to lower wages per head for those employed.”[158] The nearest approaches to the men’s level seem to have been attained in occupations covered by trade union agreements which require the payment of the men’s wage scale to the women. But even in some of these occupations, as in transport, the women did not receive all the bonuses of the men. In the munitions industry, the government seemed at first to go on record in favor of the equal pay principle, but, in practice, unskilled and semi-skilled time work were excluded, and the women failed to receive the same cost of living bonuses as the men, though unquestionably the wages of women substitutes in munitions work were much higher than the former level of women’s wages.
In wage disputes involving the question of “equal pay,” the tendency of conciliation boards such as the Special Arbitration Tribunal was to grant some wage increases, but to avoid any declaration on the principle. In the summer of 1918 such action caused a strike of women bus conductors which attracted much public attention. In July both men and women asked for a revision of a previous award on an equal pay basis. The Committee on Production, which handled the case, gave the men a bonus, but refused it to the women on the ground of the precedents set by the Ministry of Munitions in granting similar bonuses only to males. The women struck in protest on August 17, and were supported by most of the men, who feared a future double standard of wages. The committee then reconsidered its decision and on August 30 granted the women the same bonus as the men. The decision recognized the equal pay principle and also that the receipt of separation allowances by soldiers’ wives should not be considered, in fixing wages.
In trades covered neither by union agreement nor legal regulation, women generally received what is high pay according to their previous wage scale, but investigators believe that the men’s level was not even approximately reached.
CHAPTER XI
Hours of Work
Since the working hours of women in English industry have long been regulated by law, the discussion of the effects of the war on working time centers in the modifications in the legislation made because of war conditions. The main facts are comparatively well known in America. The early war time extension of hours, the discovery that the previous limitations had operated in the interests of industrial efficiency as well as humanitarian considerations and the final restoration of almost the prewar limit of working hours, with a better appreciation of their real utility and value, are fairly familiar. Certain modifications in the daily hour standards were allowed throughout the war, however, and night work by women continued common.
At the outbreak of the war legal hours were ten daily and fifty-five weekly in textile factories, and ten and a half daily and sixty weekly, with a limited amount of overtime, in nontextile factories and workshops. But the Secretary of State had the power to modify these restrictions “in case of any public emergency.” The factory acts allowed him at such periods to exempt work on government contracts and in government factories from hour limitations “to the extent and during the period named by him.”[159]
The Demand for Overtime
A demand for the exercise of this power to extend women’s hours and to allow them to do night and Sunday work was made by manufacturers of army supplies in the early days of the war. While the greatest rush of government orders came to firms making munitions, clothing and camp equipment, the number of trades affected was “unexpectedly great, extending from big guns to boot nails, from blankets to tapes, from motor wagons to cigarettes.”[160]
The factory inspectors felt that they were facing a difficult problem. Obviously it was necessary to secure the greatest possible output, but it was equally apparent that labor would soon break down if unrestricted overtime were permitted. Moreover, “was it right that one set of operatives should be working excessive hours, while others were without work at all?” It is well to keep in mind also that at this time the Germans were fighting their way through Belgium and advancing on Paris, and that the expeditionary force must at all costs be kept supplied. In the emergency, overtime orders, good for one month each, were granted individual firms who requested them on account of war demands. These orders usually permitted women to work either in eight hour or twelve hour shifts during any part of the twenty-four hours, or, as an alternative to the shift system, two hours of overtime daily on each of five days were allowed, making a seventy hour week. Permission to work Saturday overtime or Sundays was rarely granted. Additional meal periods were required if overtime was worked.