518 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 



reduce the cost of production. Some employers, e.g., in the leather and 

 small metal trades state that they have been able to introduce female and other 

 unskilled labour by means of modifications in their methods. Skilled workmen 

 are thus in some cases undercut in the labour market as effectively as though 

 women offered to do equal work for a smaller wage. 



Fair Wages. 



It is too generally assumed that the Fair Wages Clause included in all 

 Government contract agreements sufficiently safeguards the standard of wages 

 paid to women on Government work and secures to them a fair wage. This, 

 however, is not necessarily the case. The Fair Wages Clause is framed 

 apparently on the assumption that in the trades to which it applies standard 

 recognised rates of pay can readily be ascertained. In the same trade, however, 

 very considerable diversities in methods of work and division of processes often 

 exist which render the fixing of rates an extremely technical and complicated 

 matter, necessitating the existence of highly organised machinery representa- 

 tive both of employers and workpeople. These necessary conditions are to be 

 found least of all in those trades which employ large numbers of comparatively 

 unskilled women workers, and in such trades the Fair Wages Clause, save in 

 most flagrant cases, is in consequence practically inoperative. 



Certain of the worst-paid women's trades in which very large contracts have 

 been placed during the War, e.g., tailoring, shirtmaking, and food trades, are 

 scheduled under the Trade Boards Act, and though the results of this Act have 

 been very considerable in raising the standard of piece-work rates in those 

 tiades, the securing of ' fair ' wages to all workers concerned is outside the powers 

 of the Act. The Act can only secure that the piece-work rates paid are such 

 as yield to an 'average ' worker not less than a certain fixed time rate. Adult 

 women who since the War have transferred temporarily from depressed trades 

 to those which are booming are often for the purposes of the Act classed as 

 ' learners ' and employers need only pay them according to the learners' scale 

 of wages, e.g., a woman over twenty-one years of age who before the War earned 

 15s. per week as a bookbinder transferred in December last from her own trade 

 which was slack to tailoring in which there was a great demand for women's 

 labour. She was engaged in a process of ' finishing,' known as ' cleaning' — an 

 unskilled process in which the necessary rapidity could be attained in about 

 two days. For this an ordinary worker should have been paid for a fifty-five 

 hour week at least 14s. lO^d. Her employer, however, obtained a learner's 

 certificate in respect of her from the Office of Trade Boards, and after paying 

 her on the learner's scale, i.e.. Is. 5d. per week, for eleven weeks, dismissed her 

 as the volume of Government orders had decreased and she was no longer 

 needed. In another case a Government contractor sub-contracted a large pro- 

 portion of his contracts to small workshops at a rate which made it impossible 

 for the sub-contractors to pay fair rates to their workpeople. Under the Trade 

 Boards Act it was impossible to prosecute the contractor. These two cases 

 are typical of many. 



VI. — The Woman Worker after the War. 



Forecasting is usually most unsatisfactory, and in the present stage of 

 transition would largely resolve itself into guesswork. Extremely interesting 

 developments of women's employment are likely to occur within the next few 

 months, but as yet they are little more than in their incipient stages and it is not 

 the business of this Report to anticipate their results. 



Attitude of Emjiloyers to Men Beturning after War. 



It has been, however, interesting to gather from employers their ideas as to 

 ■the policy they intend to pursue after the War with regard to the men who will 

 return. Much will depend upon the industrial and economic position and the 

 rate of discharge from the Army. We have found that employers almost 



