ABSTRACT
When I turned up as instructed at the personnel office on the first Monday, the woman in charge gave me a contract as ‘assembler’, and a clock card number. Then she took me to buy an overall: the firm wasn’t responsible for damage caused to our clothes at work, she said. I paid for the overall out of my wages for the next few months at the rate of 20p a week, but never wore it after the first day because the sleeves got in my way. The supervisor collected me and showed me how to clock my card. I must remember to clock three times a day: before we started work at 7.30 a.m., before 12.45 p.m. when we started again after lunch, and at 4.15 p.m. when we went home. Your wages were calculated from the number of hours clocked in, so it’s you that suffered if you forgot to clock. Then the supervisor introduced me to Eamonn, the chargehand for the line I was to work on, and they took me to sit with Rosemary, a young Irish woman; I was to sit at her bench and learn the job from her. Rosemary was very friendly-she was pleased to have someone to talk to and share her work, not that I was much help at first. She introduced me to the other women on our line, and to her friends, and showed me where everything was, so I soon felt quite at home, I had no trouble fitting in at all, despite my fears. All the women were friendly and outgoing, which encouraged me to be the same.
