ABSTRACT
Peek Frean’s has the reputation of being progressive, and has certainly tended to be experimental in both its technical and its personnel policy. A sharp contrast between ancient and modern is evident throughout the factory. Furthermore, since 20 per cent of the men and 80 per cent of the women at Peek Frean’s at the time of the study were working on some form of payment by results—under both individual and group incentive schemes—the unions play an active part in dealing with wage questions in the factory. The implications for recruitment were obvious enough. If it was true that very little chance existed that married women—and especially those working part-time—would ever become long-term employees, then management would have little incentive to regard them as an investment and it would probably choose to employ them only for jobs in which a frequent turnover was relatively unimportant.
