Women Workers in Seven Professions Part 26

The recognition by the male staff in the Civil Service of the importance of the principle of equal pay for equal work is a sign of advance which should be welcomed by all who have the cause of women at heart. This increased enlightenment was evidenced at the Annual Conference of the Civil Service Federation held at the Guildhall on the 11th October last. Delegates were present, representing approximately 100,000 Civil Servants, and the following resolution, which is important enough to be quoted in full, was pa.s.sed by a majority of 31 votes to 10.

"That this Council expresses its conviction that equal pay for equal work is the only solution of the problem of male and female labour in the Civil Service, and considers that the establishment of this principle is the only alternative to the compet.i.tion of cheapness which is the result of the existing double standard of payment, and is affecting so injuriously the conditions of service of both men and women. It therefore pledges itself to endeavour to obtain the abolition of the s.e.x disability."

Women in the Service are realising more and more that their strength lies in effective combination. A new organisation has recently sprung into being as a result of the introduction of Women Clerks into the Board of Trade and the National Health Insurance Service, the Federation of Civil Service Women Clerks having been formed for the purpose of working for the larger interests of the women in the various clerical departments of the Civil Service. The general policy of the Federation will be to afford a ready means of communication between various sections of the Service for the purpose of taking joint action when necessary in the interests of the whole body of Women Clerks, and to enable them to concentrate more effectively on the larger issues connected with the claim for equality of opportunity for women with men in the Civil Service.

This article will not be complete without some reference to the Report of the Holt Committee which is engaging the attention of the Postmaster General at the present time.

When the Report was published in August last, it was generally agreed that the women had been badly treated. The demand for equality of remuneration with the male staff which was put forward by the Women Telegraphists and the Women Clerks has been completely ignored. The Women Sorters are awarded an increase of 2s. a week in the maximum salary, and, as a set off, it is proposed that they shall undertake a larger portion of the minor clerical duties now performed by Women Clerks. The immediate supervision of the Women Sorters is to be met by the establishment of the Senior Sorters (who at present receive a supervising allowance of 3s. a week) as a regular supervising cla.s.s with a fixed scale of salary, viz., 32s. per week rising by 1s. 6d.

to 38s. The ultimate supervision remains in the hands of the Women Clerks. The Committee recommended the abandonment of the tentative new grade of Female a.s.sistant Clerks on the ground that there is no need for a cla.s.s intermediate between the Women Sorters and the Girl and Women Clerks. A further recommendation, causing widespread dissatisfaction, is that the hours of duty shall be increased by three and a half hours per week. The eight-hour day for manipulative work and the seven-hour day for clerical work has. .h.i.therto been the standard working day in the Post Office, and the suggested increase with no compensating rise in salary apart from an immediate increment, not to be carried above the maximum of the scale, has been rejected by all cla.s.ses with indignation.[3] The Women Telegraphists get nothing, the Women Telephonists nothing, the Women Clerks of the First and Second cla.s.ses, 10 and 5 increase in the maximum salary respectively. The Women Counter Clerks and Telegraphists in the provinces get nothing, although the men of the same cla.s.s get 2s. a week increase in the maximum.

It is understood from a reliable source that the higher officials of the Post Office admit that the women on the whole have been scurvily treated, and it is confidently expected that the Postmaster General will modify and improve some of the proposals when the final revision of the Report is undertaken. Apart from the various cla.s.s interests, the only recommendation that can be regarded as in any way satisfactory to women is the abolition of the grade of a.s.sistant Women Clerks as at present const.i.tuted. The only form in which the new grade could be at all acceptable would be in subst.i.tution for the grades of Girl Clerk and Women Sorter with a scale of salary comparable to the Male a.s.sistant Clerk, in accordance with the claim placed before the Holt Commission and before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service.

The insertion of a new water-tight compartment such as the Department proposed, between the Women Sorters and Women Clerks would be dangerous to the interests, and detrimental to the expansion of both, while the present restriction of women to rank and file work continues. It would press the Sorters still further down in the scale by depriving them of all opportunity of succeeding to clerical work, as the recruitment of the a.s.sistant Clerks from their ranks would inevitably be very small; and it would also injure the prospects of promotion of the Women Clerks by decreasing their numbers and by depriving them of higher posts due to growth of work and increase of staff. This latter result was clearly foreseen by the Department when the scheme was first promulgated. Moreover, it would be a blow to the general status of women in the Post Office by depreciating the value of their work and lowering the standard of their employment. It is a matter for congratulation, therefore, that the Select Committee have advised the abolition of the new grade, and the Postmaster General, having agreed in the House of Commons to refer the matter to the arbitrament of the Parliamentary Committee, can hardly repudiate their decision.

[Footnote 1: See the end of the article for the Report of the Holt Committee.]

[Footnote 2: The women are pressing for identical examinations.

[EDITOR.]]

[Footnote 3: The Postmaster General has recently (December 1913), conceded the point, and has promised that there shall be no increase in the hours of duty in the Post Office Service; concessions about pay have been refused. [EDITOR.]]

SECTION VI

WOMEN CLERKS AND SECRETARIES

The salary of the woman secretary of the best cla.s.s, whether working privately or for a firm, seems to be 100 to 150 a year. Generally speaking, this is exactly what it was twenty years ago. It would seem that the highest salaries are those given by City men to confidential clerks (sometimes relatives), who are either good accountants or good linguists. The head of an influential typing office and registry in London informed me that the highly paid posts of translators to City firms are usually filled by German girls. The woman receiving 200 to 250 is a very rare person. I know only of one who receives 5 a week, and that is from an American firm in London. She does private secretarial work, but has no book-keeping and no foreign correspondence. Some years ago I knew of another woman, private secretary to the head of a large publishing firm, who had 200 a year.

She was an efficient French correspondent, an able, all-round woman, and had been with the firm for twenty years. There are now two clerks in her place at much lower salaries. There seems to be a tendency to employ two cheap clerks in place of one expensive one.

People unacquainted with the facts, seldom realise how small is the remuneration of capable secretaries. I am acquainted with the work of a woman who has the following qualifications: verbatim shorthand, neat typing and sound knowledge of secretarial and business work, including book-keeping; she is methodical and conscientious in her work, has had some years' City Experience, three years in the shorthand and typing offices in the Houses of Parliament and with peers and members. She is asking 45s. a week, and would take 40s. "with prospects."

Well-paid posts seem to be exceptional. A woman with an intimate knowledge of City conditions, who was chief accountant to an important firm for sixteen years, informs me that 175 is the highest salary she has ever known a woman clerk to receive. The lowest on record seems to be 5s. a week. There is a woman running a typing office in the City who hires out shorthand typists at this figure to business firms.

She employs a staff of from fifteen to twenty girls. Similarly, an industrial insurance company, nine months ago, opened a new department to deal with the work of the new Act. They engaged fifty girl clerks at 10s. with a superintendent, also a woman, at 30s. a week.

There is sometimes difficulty in getting accurate information with regard to payments. The heads of typing schools and colleges are apt to give too rosy a picture, and the individual clerk has usually a somewhat narrow experience and is inclined to be pessimistic. A man whom I interviewed (in place of the manager, who was engaged), at one of the biggest schools for training clerks, informed me that everything depended on the clerk. He said the girls who were getting 10s. a week were not worth more, and that there were "many" women clerks getting from 300 to 350. I said I was delighted to hear this as I had had difficulty in running to earth the woman clerk with 200, and had not before heard of the higher salaries. I took out my notebook and begged for particulars. He then said he knew of "one" of their diplomees working for a firm of florists, who had a salary of 300: she was able to correspond in English, French, German, and Spanish. I asked if he would kindly give me her name and address that I might interview her, but he said he could not possibly do that, as any woman clerk who allowed herself to be interviewed would be certain to lose her post.

The manager of a business in Manchester, who employs five shorthand typists, pays them from 15s. to 30s. He admits that it is impossible for the girls to live on their salaries unless they are at home with their parents, as is the case with all of them. But he says that it is unreasonable to expect him to give more than the market rates, and that for 30s. he gets excellent service. He suggests that the only way to raise wages is for the clerks to organise.

The princ.i.p.al of a high cla.s.s typing office in the City, a woman of experience, who trains only a select number of educated girls, never allows a pupil from her school to begin at less than 25s. a week with a prospect of speedy increase. She pays her own translator 3, 5s.

a week, and four members of her staff are paid at the rate of 160 a year.

Mr Elvin, Secretary of the Union of Clerks, tries to enforce a minimum wage of 35s. a week as the beginning salary for an expert shorthand typist, and this may be regarded as the present Trade Union rate. Mr Elvin's difficulty is chiefly with the girls themselves. They are so accustomed to the idea of women being paid less than men that it is not easy to get them to insist on equal pay. In one case he was asked to supply a woman secretary for a certain post. He agreed to find a suitable person if the firm would guarantee a commencing salary of 35s. a week. After some demur this was conceded, and he sent to a well-known school for three competent clerks that he might examine them and recommend the best of the three. After the test he asked them, in turn, what salary they expected. They were all over twenty-one years of age and all competent. One mentioned 25s., the second 23s., and the third 1 a week. On being asked, they said they knew they were worth more, but they thought that, as they were women, they would not get it.

Where there is no one to safeguard the interests of the clerk, an employer, on the look-out for cheap labour, finds it easily enough.

The head of a big firm offered a French girl, an expert shorthand writer in three languages, 15s. a week, with a possible rise after three months. She finally accepted a post at 30s. a week as she could get nothing better through registries or by advertis.e.m.e.nt.

Unless a girl has a claim on a school where she has trained, or has influential friends, it is very difficult for her to get a post suited to her needs in London. The whole profession seems to be in a chaotic condition, and the chances through advertis.e.m.e.nt are haphazard and unsatisfactory. Employment bureaux maintain that there are more good posts than there are qualified women to fill them, but individual secretaries are timid about giving up unsatisfactory posts as they do not know how to get better.

Take the case of a private secretary to a Member of Parliament.

He loses his seat, retires to the country, and gives up his London secretary. He gives her a number of introductions. These lead to nothing, and she is forced into the compet.i.tion of the City. Her particular training is of no use in a commercial office, and her value falls to 30s. a week.

A woman with an intimate knowledge of women clerks and secretaries in the City for the past twenty years, says that it is difficult to overestimate the poverty of a vast number of girls. Many of them are the chief breadwinners of the family. She knows of half a dozen cases of men of forty and a little older who are living on the earnings of their daughters; there may be two girls in the family, one getting 12s. and the other 25s. a week.

The private secretary who lives in, has usually excellent food and pleasant surroundings, but in some cases the life is a solitary one. Unless there is a governess or other educated employee in the household, she has no companionship. The salary varies from 30 to 120 and sometimes more. There is apparently no fixed rate. One lady writes:

"For two years I lived in the house of Sir----, the most hopelessly isolated and uninteresting existence, within the four walls of his study. A secretary should certainly stick out for a free week-end once a month when living in. Isolation is horribly bad for one."

The secretary living in with congenial literary or medical people, where she is made one of the family circle, has a happier time, but the payment is not high.

Apart from salary, the conditions in which the woman clerk works are by no means ideal.

Twenty years ago, in a far northern city, there was a flourishing new school where over thirty girls of from fifteen to twenty were being taught shorthand, typewriting, book-keeping, and all that goes to the making of a fully-equipped clerk. This school was the first experiment of the kind in an enterprising community. As the pupils qualified, with Pitman certificates of varying degrees of speed, at the end of six months or longer, the way in which old-fashioned lawyers accepted the innovation of attractive young women on their clerical staff, seemed almost magical. Decorum relegated the young women to separate rooms from the rest of the employees, and the formality in the bearing of heads of departments towards these pioneer females must have been gratifying to Mrs Grundy. So superior to human exigencies seemed these dignified men, that the subject of lavatory accommodation for young women, mewed up from 9 to 1 and from 2 to 5.30, was not mentioned.

Woman's modesty, if it were to reach the high standard made for her by man, had to come before her health or comfort. Although typists of all grades have multiplied by thousands[1] during the past twenty years--in London alone there are over 25,000 women clerks and secretaries--there is still need for adequate inspection of sanitary accommodation for women workers of this cla.s.s. Apart altogether from sanitary accommodation, common sense would seem to suggest that, in the case of any one who has to turn out decent typing, a regular supply of hot water is a necessity for washing hands that may have to change a ribbon or do the many little messy jobs that typing involves.

In a lecture before the Fabian Women's Group in February 1912, Miss Florence, of the a.s.sociation of Women Clerks and Secretaries, said:

"With regard to the sanitary conditions--these as a rule are bad, especially where there is only one woman. The difficulty has been shirked by the women themselves in a great many cases.... I do not see how these can be altered except by improving the status and position of women, so that they may become strong enough to say they will not have it if it is too bad."

Who is to dictate what is "too bad"? Surely the only remedy is to have a proper standard of decency enforced by law. Women as a rule are fools on this subject, and will endure almost any discomfort, rather than complain.

In giving evidence before the Royal Commission, in May last year, concerning the conditions of employment and their effect on the health of Civil Service female typists and shorthand writers, Miss Charlesworth, Honorary Secretary of the Civil Service Typists'

a.s.sociation, said:

"The statistics as regards sickness relating to our cla.s.s are almost too small to be of very much use.... I may say from experience that they are greatly influenced by the conditions under which the work is done. In my own department (Local Government Board) our average absence from sickness in the old office, where we were much overcrowded, varied between ten and fourteen days a year, while in our new office the average has steadily gone down from twelve to a fraction over six last year.... It is very striking that there has been that reduction in the average number of days' absence per year from sickness, from twelve to six in four years while we have been working under better conditions ... that means a less number of typing machines in one room, more light to work by and more air--better rooms to work in."

This evidence is interesting, as the worst conditions that could possibly exist in the lofty rooms of a Government office, where everything is on a big scale and there is a certain standard of comfort, must be superior to the majority of commercial offices, especially in London, where s.p.a.ce is so expensive. Think of four girls taking shorthand notes by telephone in a room with thirty typewriting machines working at once!

There are no figures available with regard to the health of women clerks generally. The common ailments are neuritis, anaemia, and nervous breakdown. Typing is also a strain on the eyesight and hearing. Miss Charlesworth says that in her experience it is the girls who are not suited for the work who suffer most from ill-health.

One typing office and school, of high repute for excellence of work, had rooms so dark that electric light was always used in one or other of them during part of the day. No sun ever entered the work-rooms.

The salaries were good, but overtime was paid at only 6d. an hour.

There was a sort of compulsion, too, to work overtime; some of the best typists, occasionally even stayed all night during excessive rushes of work. No holidays were paid for, and it was regarded as disloyalty on the part of a clerk to stay away for sickness. There was an instance of a girl being dismissed because she stayed away a fortnight owing to influenza. This particular firm recently moved into bigger, brighter rooms, not out of humanity to its staff, but because the lease had run out.

Where compet.i.tion is as keen as in the typing business, it is often the case that the comfort of employees is considered as little as is compatible with running the place at a profit. There seems to be no inspection, and there is no law to say how many typists may be worked together, or what limit of noise shall be endured by them. Everything is ruled by the individual standard of decency of the employer. Many well-educated girls enter typing offices for the excellent practical training to be had, and for the short time they remain they are willing to put up with severe discipline and some personal discomfort.

There are, of course, typing offices with as high a level of comfort and decency as the most exacting law would prescribe. Many of the big engineering firms and City houses have most comfortable and even luxurious quarters for their women clerks.

In old days in the above-mentioned northern school, it was possible to get complete teaching as a clerk--excellent teaching, too--for a guinea a term. There were some shorthand typists whose training cost them only that initial guinea and the fees of the supplementary course of evening cla.s.ses, 5s. and 10s. according to the number of subjects.

In London at that time a year's course in the same subjects cost as much as 60 guineas at some of the chief typing schools. The fee nowadays, at one of the foremost London schools for a secretarial course for six months only, is 60 guineas; a year's course is 100.[2]

This includes book-keeping and shorthand correspondence in one foreign language, besides shorthand and typing, etc.

The best testimony shows that a year is altogether too long for an intelligent well-educated girl of eighteen or more to spend on technical training.[3] Mr James Oliphant, writing in _The School World_ for July 1913 on the subject of secretarial training for girls, says:

".... It is to be noted that the curriculum in girls' schools is of a much more reasonable character than that which is commonly provided for boys, and that the more completely it is fitted to supply a good general education, the better it would be adapted to the special needs of those who wish to become clerks or secretaries. It would seem eminently desirable that such aspirants should continue at the secondary school between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, being provided with a specialised course of study ... but whenever it is possible it would be well to insist that no subject should be included which is not generally educative in the widest sense. The acquisition of such mechanical arts as stenography and typewriting should be relegated to technical colleges where, according to general testimony, proficiency can be gained by well-educated girls in a period varying from six to nine months. 'Commercial correspondence' is an abomination; a sufficient knowledge of the ordinary forms of letter-writing should be imparted in every course of English composition ... while the special jargon of each business or office can be readily acquired by any intelligent girl when it becomes necessary."