The experiences of class and gender relations and women workers at GEC 1945 1965

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T H E EX P E R IE N C E S O F CLA SS AND GEN DER R ELA TIO N S AND W O M EN W O R K ER S A T G E C 1945-1965

Kale Ellen Mulholland

Submitted for the Degree o f PhD

To

University o f Warwick

The Department o f Sociology

C O N T E N T S

P ^ e

Acknowledgm ents i

Abstract ii

Chapter 1 Introduction T o T he Study o f

W om en Workers A t G E C 1 Section (1) Introduction 1 Chapter 2 T h e Character O f T he Coventry Labour Market 7 Section (1) Introduction 7 Section (2) Historical Background:

C oventry’s Industrial Base 10 Section(3) W om en And The Coventry Labour Market 20 Chapter (3) T h e Development O f T he GEC In Coventry: An Outline 28 Section (I ) W om ens’s Em ployment At GEC 28 Section (2) J o b And Pay Structure 38 Chapter 4 W om en ’s Experiences O f Recruitment And Employment At

G E C 43

Section (I) S ingle Women In T he Post W ar Decades 44 Section (2) Part-tim e Work: Hours to Suit You 55 Section (3) W ages or Pin Money 74 Chapter S C u ltu re And Femininity In The W orkplace 89 Section (2) Fem ininity and Its R ites of Passage 93 Section (3) Gendered Job Structures 102 Chapter 6 S k ill And Female Labour 116 Section (1) Introduction 116 Section (2) Theoretical Debate 118 Section (3) M anagem ent's Perceptions o f Women’s Skill 131 Section (4) W om en's Perception o f Skill 135 Section (5) J o b Descriptions 150 Section (6) Train ing Programmes 165 Section (7) Experience Job Differentiation and ’Promotion’ 178 Section (8) C hanges In work Processes: Bench Work to Line Work 185 Section (9) W o rk Processes and Changes In Job Gender Boundaries 192

-Section (10) Conclusions

Chapter 7 The C hanging Experience O f Work Organization, Management Control at G E C

Section (1) Introduction Section (2) Theoretical D ebate

Section (3) Gender and C on trol in W om en's Work in Electrical Engineering

Section (4) Gender and th e Change in Work in the Machine S hop

Section (6) Gender and th e R ole of Supervision Section (6) Gender and th e Organization o f Work in

Inspection Section (7) Conclusions C h apters

Chapter 9 Appendix

W orkplace Resistance And T rade Unionism Bibliography

204

214 228 246 233 263 268 314

332

§

8

ACK NO W LEDG M ENTS

I am particularly indebted to my supervisor D r T o n y Eiger for his patient assistance and perceptive guidance and thus has ensured that I see an e n d to this project. (Successful I hope)

Secondly 1 would like to thank my tremendous w o m e n friends who have given their support through the most painful moments. I would like to th ank Barbro Hoel Kangathe for her positive help especially in the early stages in the preparation o f m y held work. I would like to thank my comrades and friends Pat McFadden and Bience G aw anas for their participation and contribution to our many lively debates on feminist and socialist co nc epts.

My thanks to each and every member o f my lo v in g family but especially to Paul and Michael for their love, tolerance, and humour. A special thanks also to m y dearest friend Ahmed Abu basher Ahmed.

My thanks goes especially to all the wonderful w o m e n who agreed to help me for sharing their experiences with me, their assistance made my p ro je c t not only possible but very enjoyable.

I am very greatful to M r Paxton, Mr Croft and personnel at GEC for their help and co­ operation.

ABSTRACT

AUEW

Glossary

. AM ALGAMATED UNION OF ENGINEERING W O RK ERS BTH - BRITISH HOUSTON THOMSON

CP - COM M UNIST PARTY

EEF i ENGINEERING EMPLOYERS FEDERATION GEC - GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY JSSC - JOINT SHOP STEWARDS COMMITTEE M.DW - MEASURED DAY WORK PBR - PAYMENTS BY RESULTS

TGWU « TRANSPORT AND GENERAL WORKERS UNION WW1 * WORLD WAR ONE

Introduction T o The Study O f Women W orkers At GEC. Introduction

This study examines the experiences o f fem ale manual workers employed during the post war period in electrical engineering in what is now a large multi-national company. Throughout this period the GEC constituted an important source of employment for women living in the Coventry area. The decision to focus on this particular employer em erged through living, work­ ing and studying in the local community and m y ow n interest in the character of wom en's work, and particularly in the sexual division o f labour. A t a superficial glance local people had a very clear sense o f the job market, its foundations, and gender patterns. Male workers were employed in the 'm otor industry' while women found w ork in the 'w om en's factory’ the GEC. Such a per­ ception conveyed a strong sense o f a deeply entrenched sexual division of labour. I was interested in how such work patterns persisted bearing in mind studies such as Summerfield (1977) and Braybon (1981) which portray w o m en 's contribution to the war economy, the disrup­ tion of traditional work and gender patterns and the major role women had played in different sectors o f the economy, but particularly in 'm ale work' in the engineering industry. Moreover, the emergence of a wealth o f feminist literature on the issue o f women and work, and particularly ethnographic studies focused attention on the resilience o f the sexual division o f labour, and the plight o f women as unskilled and low paid workers. The image presented o f women workers in studies published during the early 1980s (Pollert 1981 and Cavendish 1982 among others) was that they occupied the lower end o f the labour m arket, carried out the least skilled jobs in increas­ ingly labour intensive operations at very poor pay rates and with little job security.

o f the studies appeared to concentrate on male workers and the ways their traditions of work and skill had been eroded, o r the way in which m ale workers rationalised and endured unskilled work. While there was a general acceptance that women did unskilled work, the notion o f work, com­ petence and skill am ong such women was not investigated. The exception to this approach was the pioneering work o f Phillips and Taylor (1980) who began to raise the question about the links between gender and skill categories. Both the widespread failure to integrate these topics and the issues raised by Phillips and Taylor (and later Cockbum) suggested that there w as a need to con­ sider the question o f worker competence from women's perspective and to highlight their views on the kinds o f semi-skilled jobs characterising women’s work, and their notion o f skill, experi­ ence and expertise in relation to such work. Therefore one o f my central concerns in this thesis is to consider such features from the wom en's perspective, to outline and to exam ine their experi­ ences. and to locate this lived experience in relation to changes and development in the organiza­ tion o f work and the institutional definition and recognition o f skills at the G E C . Since most of the women I interviewed had many years o f practical work experience I particularly wanted to investigate in what ways this experience counted and to whom? In this context both the manage­ ments and the womens view s will be elucidated.

A further concern has been the question o f workplace culture. Among others Westwood (1984) makes much o f wom en worker activities and the practice and influences o f domesticity and sexuality in the workplace. This is presented as both a challenge and a com prom ise in rela­ tion to management pressures, while it is also presented as a re-constitution o f 'w om an' in the workplace. Cockbum develops the parallel argument that male workers activities also recon­ struct masculinity in the workplace. In both instances this emphasis is almost exclusively on the role o f the workers them selves, implying that managements are not involved. Although one of my concerns is to chan the culture o f femininity and reproduction at the GEC a s an experience articulated by the women concerned. I also tentatively raise questions about m anagem ent's role at the GEC. In doing so I also comment tentatively upon possible links between the character of workplace culture and representations of w om en's competence.

-Another essential aspect o f any explanation o f wom en's experiences o f work concerns the pow er relations in the workplace, their character and how they operated in the control o f the women concerned. In order to explore this question I intend to examine the processes involved in the construction o f jobs, and the ways th e women experienced such jobs. This means I will explore a range o f activities involving the management and the male workers. While several important studies, such as. Burawoy (1979) have offered a sensitive and informative perspective on the character o f workplace control they have generally ignored the question o f gender. This important facet o f control has however been a central concern o f much of the feminist ethno­ graphic work such as Cavendish (1982). A ny examination o f the processes of workplace control for wom en must seek to address both class and gender relations. Therefore I have drawn on a num ber o f the more conventional approaches such as Edwards (1979) and Thompson (1983) so as to contextualise the changing character o f the labour process and w om en's place in it. I explore a range o f controls experienced by the w om en, and focus on a range of interlinked control processes, which include organizational, technical and gender change in the job structure together with the ways the women coped in such circumstances. Having outlined these patterns o f control and work organisation I will also discuss the character o f resistance and the responses and stra­ tegies presented by the women. In this context I will take account o f organized and unorganized worker strategies but highlight the role o f the trade unions, and w om en's perceptions o f such organization. Here and elsewhere in the thesis the significance of gender in forms o f acceptance and resistance will be explored.

The next chapter attempts to convey some sense of the changing character o f the local labour market from the mid 19th century onwards. It seeks to portray trajectories o f change and consistency in both product and labour market developments, and the implications for patterns of employment and women’s role in the local economy.

In my third chapter I provide an outline of the founding and grow th o f the GEC in Coventry and its emergence as a ‘w om en's factory.’ In doing this I intend to provide an outline o f the significance o f women’s employment at the GEC. and its relationship to the developments in the product market, labour process, job structure and payment systems characteristic of other Coven­ try factories.

In the fourth chapter I use my interview material to look at the GEC through the experi­ ences o f the women I interviewed; and in doing so I organize the material around the similarities and differences in their patterns o f experience. I also draw on interviews with a number o f managers, the purpose o f which was to gain some insights into com pany employment practices and policies. This chapter is concerned with three themes: the w om en’s preference for em ploy­ ment at OEC: their experiences of the particular job structure, specifically part-time work and the question o f wages. Such themes are organized in three corresponding sections. In order to ela­ borate these themes. 1 consider the similarities and differences o f experience o f women in dif­ ferent generational cohorts, o f different social status and varied origin.

Chapter five explores an important feature of workplace organization, namely workplace culture. As already stated some recent ethnographies of women at work have identified a distinc­ tively female workplace culture, particularly highlighting the celebration o f the reproductive aspects o f femininity. The character o f such a phenomenon has been presented as contradictory in terms o f worker consciousness but also as a form o f resistance by women workers. This too was a prominent feature o f workplace culture at GEC. While this com plex phenomenon has been largely attributed to the responses o f female workers in mediating and in coping with the more oppressive nature o f workplace practices. I will consider whether it m ay also be part of manage­ m ent strategies in managing women workers. In developing this analysis I do not seek to

-undermine its im portance as a female worker activity, but to illustrate neglected aspects o f the construction o f femininity in the workplace.

Chapter six is divided into several sections and investigates more closely the character of semi-skilled work and the notion o f skill. In the first section I review a range o f literature con­ cerning conceptions o f work, gender and skill, as a basis for contextualizing the experiences and the impressions o f the wom en interviewed. In the second section I refer to the attitudes expressed by a range o f m anagers concerning the question o f skill and the kinds o f semi-skilled labour characterising w om en's work at GEC. In the third section I use interview and other m aterial to outline some o f the work tasks and try to convey the kind o f demands made on the women con­ cerned. The purpose o f this is to allow the women themselves to describe the tasks and activities which constitutes w om en's work and to highlight and elaborate on its complexities and difficulties from their perspective. This provides the context for the next three sections. Follow ­ ing this, in the fourth section. I look more carefully at the aims, purpose and quality o f training. I argue that training programmes and 'on the job experience' represent evidence o f expertise. In a fifth section I explore the hierarchy in the job structure possibilities for promotion and any ways in which the experience o r expertise o f women workers were recognized by management. In the sixth and final em pirical section I exam ine some examples of the organization of job and gender boundaries as well as taking generational features in the presentation o f 'sk ill' definitions into account. Some o f the implications of this material are then discussed at the end of the chapter.

Chapter seven exam ines influences on the changing patterns o f control for women. I iden­ tify several facets o f management control strategies as well as seeking to explore the gendered nature o f control. Using my material I locate w om en's experiences o f control in a variety of work settings within the company, highlighting shifts and changes involving the fragmentation o f work, the importance o f gender and shifts in labour market conditions.

6

-forms o f resistance and trade union organization. In doing this, I com m ent on low key resistance, unorganized challenges to m anagement and resistance through organized collective activity. One o f m y main aim s is to dem onstrate som e sense o f the importance and the character o f the com ­ plex interplay o f class and gender in the subordination o f the wom en concerned.

Finally I complete the discussion in chapter nine with a brief overview o f the findings and arguments contained in the body o f my thesis.

CHAPTER TW O

T he Character O f The Coventry Labour Market. Introduction

8

-traditional and local infrastructure should become a m ajor employer o f women.

Material for this chapter is largely drawn from secondary sources, particularly economic histories concerned generally with the growth o f Coventry as an important industrial sector, and several more focused studies concerned with specific features of the Coventry labour market like labour relations, o r migration. The set of concerns raised are often crucial to any understanding o f Coventry’s econom ic growth, but they do not deal with more particular issues such as the importance o f w om en workers in the local economy, and the impact o f the dynam ics o f gender on the character o f the labour market. Information may be patchy in som e areas, so what is presented is tentative and needs m ore thorough investigation than 1 am able to offer at this point.

these wom en were m arried, and as such represented a break with past traditions when there was a w idespread ban on married women in the labour market.

T h e electrical engineering industry in the guise o f the GEC became the critical site o f the freshly defined gender segregated labour m arket, particularly in the post-war period. To under­ stand this development it will be necessary to chart the development o f the labour markets, which w ill dem onstrate that this industry unlike the other new industries, had no clear links with the ear­ lier history o f development in the city. The GEC was to become the major em ployer o f female labour consolidating an already deeply entrenched segregated labour market. As a result by the post w a r period C oventry’s labour markets were constructed on the basis of m ale and female jo b s, a point well borne out by Tolliday:

"The labour forces under consideration were all overwhelmingly white and and male . The lines o f segregation in the Coventry labour market were clearly defined and well known. In Federated vehicle-building firms less than four per cent o f manual workers were women in 1967: Morris Engines employed only 44. (one per cent) Standard Motors 186, (2.3 per cent). The picture in aircraft was the same: the biggest firm, Bristol- Siddley, employed 91 wom en (1.8 per cent). The only place that placed women in m otor firms was in the the trim shops where most o f the 383 (6.4 per cent) at Rootes and 403 (6.9) per cent) at Jaguar worked. Mechanical engineering followed a similar pattern: Herberts em ployed eight per ce n t women. W om en's employment in engineering was alm ost wholly concentrated in electrical engineering: 36 per cent o f GEC workers were wom en."*

T h is segregation o f the Coventry labour market was very entrenched, a point endorsed by the w om en interviewed, especially those women entering or seeking work in the post-war decade. In o rd er to explain this pattern it will be necessary to look at the development o f Coventry labour m arkets m ore fully.

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-H istorical Background: C oventry's Industrial Base.

The growth and developm ent of C oventry's industrial base o v er the last century has experi­ enced a dramatic change an d restructuring. This was characterised by the decline o f the 'old* craft based industries; the rise and decline in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries of some o f the transitional industries; the birth and development o f the 'n ew ' industries in the first decades o f the 20th century, and their consolidation in the inter- and post-war years. Throughout these changes, even when w om en did succeed in entering em ploym ent, they were placed in sexu­ ally segregated jobs, usually forms of unskilled and semi-skilled work.

I will seek to locate an d explain this pattern o f segregation by looking at two aspects o f the pattern of wage work in C oventry. Firstly, I will chart the pattern o f industrial development, with the rise and fall o f specific products and sectors, and secondly I will look at the way in which the local labour market was expanded. My review o f the rise and fall o f sectors will underline the extent to which such discontinuities coexisted with the continual centrality o f male manual work, with electrical engineering the major exception, whilst my review o f the expansion o f the labour market highlights the centrality of male in-migration and the secondary development o f recruit­ ment for full-time and later part-tim e women workers. I will focus first on the overall pattern o f development in em ploym ent and the labour market, before, explicitly commenting on the im pli­ cations o f this pattern for th e experience o f women.

During the second h a lf o f the 19th century the ’o ld ’ craft based industries, which included silk and ribbon weaving and watchmaking, declined. The 'transitional' industries, which included the mechanised s e c to r o f watchmaking, chainmaking and the cycle trade emerged over the later decades o f the 19th century and survived into the early years o f the 20th century: indeed some like chainmaking co ntin ued much longer into the 1980s. T he new industries o f the 20th century included textiles, synthetic fibres, m otors, aircraft and their component industries and electrical engineering.

which provided workshop space, skills and labour.

One o f the most outstanding features characterising Coventry’s industrial base from 1860s onwards was the narrowness o f its range o f prod ucts, which had implications for the sexual divi­ sion o f labour and the stability o f the waged labou r relationship. For instance from the 1860s until the turn o f the century Coventry's econom y was based on two industries: silk and watch­ making. Whilst there was a shift at the turn o f th e century there was still a reliance on two indus­ tries, now the more mechanized sector o f w atchm aking and the cycle industry. The cycle indus­ try proved to be the transitional link to the grow th o f the m otor industry throughout the 20th cen­ tury. motors sharing the local economy with aircraft during the inter-war and immediate post-war reconstruction years. Thoms and Donnelly (1986) argue that the local econom y by the 1960s was reduced to dependency on very specific features and products associated with the motor industry, and to a lesser degree electrical engineering.

The shifting focus on specific products w as a result o f both changes in technology and market opportunities. The decline in w atchm aking was due in part to iu refusal to adapt to the changing labour process whilst failing to respond to the opportunities o f the m ass market, though Rotherhams (watchmaking) survived well into the 1920s by embracing mechanized production processes. Nevertheless the demise o f the ’old’ watchmaking industry paralleled the rise o f the cycle trade and the 'n ew ' industries o f motors, electrical engineering and synthetic silks. Most o f the watchmakers simply closed business, while som e like Alick Hills diversified into chainmak­ ing. Against this background it was the cycle trade that heralded in a new form o f labour process: "It was essentially the cycle trade which bro ugh t the phenomenon o f large scale mass pro­ duction to Coventry's industrial landscape."2

However the success of the cycle industry w as short lived, peaking in Coventry in 1890 with seventy different firms and gradually fading in the early decades of the 20th century due to

•

12-m arket co12-mpetition and the tendency o f Coventry's entrepreneurs to venture into the nascent m otor industry.

The growth o f the m otor industry in the early days benefited from the transferable skills associated with the cycle industry and the growing machine tool industry. The Daimler was the first m otor manufacturer, beginning in 1896. By 1905 there were tw enty-nine different car m ak­ ers in Coventry. This number had decreased by 1913 as a result o f an econom ic crisis but in 1914 was join ed by the Standard. With the exception o f Fords at M anchester. Coventry was the lead­ ing industrial centre for the production o f motor cars.3

T h e machine tool industry was established in 1888, and whilst contributing to the grow th of the m otor trade, also grew because o f the latter's expansion. A lfred Herbert was the leading m anufacturer in this field followed by Webster and Bennett, and C oventry Guage and Tool.

W ickman's, an offshoot o f the m otor trade, was partly representative o f the components industries although Thoms and Donnelly argue that local firms depended largely on outside sup­ pliers for components, pointing out that Coventry never developed a comprehensive component Another strand o f the 'new ' industries settled in Coventry at the beginning o f the century when Courtaulds which produced synthetic silks opened its first plant in Foleshill, north C oven­ try. an area which accommodated the silk trade and as a result provided workshop space and labour.4

Finally Electrical Engineering, characterised as another of the 'n e w ' industries was brought to Coventry by British Thompson Houston in 1912 3 BTH began by producing heavy equipment for electrical power stations and it was not until 1916 that GEC first cam e to Coventry and con­ centrated on the lighter side o f electrical engineering by making telephone systems and wireless sets fo r the consumer market. (See the next chapter for a fuller discussion o f the development of

the GEC in Coventry.)

Throughout the earlier decades o f the 20th employers tended to be small in size, and did not extend beyond a single workshop or plant, often employing not more than a hundred workers. However, according to Richardson (1972) this was a period o f tremendous experim entation, change and innovation for male workers:

"It is im possible to exaggerate the immense self-confidence with which the yo u n g men working in C oventry approached the making o f motor cars in the years before 1914. Some worked on their own account in backyard workshops, others in quality firms such as the Daimler, but it was difficult to persuade anyone that real motors were made anyw here else. They w ere an astonishing social cross- section, army and public school men m ixing freely with form er cycle workers, all united by a common enthusiasm. Young apprentices worked at Daim ler. Siddley-Deasy or some other factory during the day and argued about cars all evening in the relatively few hotel lounges which this overcrowded city possessed. "6 According to this account the innovators o f some of the early motor industry involved local apprentices, suggesting that the establishment of the m otor industry was a result o f the com bined effort o f local craft initiative and other enthusiasts, underlined by a predominantly m ale culture.

The 'n e w ' industries were distinct in a number o f important ways according to G lucksm an (1986); they represented a shift from heavy capital goods to consumer products; from craft based labour processes to the assembly line, or conveyor belt and continuous flow production; em ploy­ ing semi-skilled workers. Glucksman also notes that this shift involved a relocation o f capital from the old stable industries to the Midlands, while Lancaster explained that labour m igrated to Coventry from the depressed areas. So by the turn o f the century the 'new ' industrial base was in its embryonic form in Coventry, though the First World War brought about a tem porary diversification in the Coventry product market from consumer to war products. T h ese were largely produced in the Ordnance Works which were under government contract.

1 4

-The inter-war period witnessed a consolidation of the ’new ' industries in Coventry. This included motors, aircraft, electrical engineering, synthetic fibres and machine tools. By 1929 there were forty car producers in the city making luxury cars, and although there was a trend towards change in the methods o f production from short batch to the use o f flow line standardized m ethods this remained partial and uneven.7 By 1939 six large companies dominated the local econom y still in the business o f luxury cars. The aircraft industry too grew in this period, stimu­ lated by the government rearmament programme. The significance o f local manufacturers in the build up to the war effort was symbolised in the Shadow Factory Scheme when Coventry's lead­ ing industrialists, including Alfred H erbert, the Rootes Brothers and Captain Black from the Stan­ dard collaborated with the government.

This signalled another diversification in market product with the construction o f aircraft and aero engines. In 1937 four Shadow Factories were built producing 800 aircraft engines each week.8 Thus the local economy was deployed in the interests o f the war effort, the GEC produc­ ing radar equipment, while Herberts made 68,000 machine tools between 1939-1944.

T h e post war local econom y was redirected into the vehicle and electrical engineering industries, a heritage o f the interwar era. This was despite som e initial discussion about the course o f its direction. For instance, H inton (1982) suggests that these involved at the end o f the war workplace politics in the form o f the strong, communist dominated steward movement, which argued about an alternative socialist economic strategy for the city. This stemmed in part from fears that once the economy fell into private hands then the old problems o f unstable fluctuating employment patterns would re-occur. However this trend was very short lived because very soon there was collaboration between the labour m ovement and the industrialists on a post war economic strategy which would boost the production o f m otor vehicles, in which the productivist doctrines o f the left were incorporated with the expansionist policies o f private capi­ tal as the route to post war reconstruction.

...

7 T olliday, S. in Life and Labour in a 20tt^City. eds. Lancaster. B. Mason. T.

industrial base, and since then it has been accommodated by two waves o f migration, o n e in the inter-war period: for instance between 1931 and 1939 the local population had gro w n from 167,083 to 224, 262 as a result partly from the entry o f 42.148 migrants into the local labour m a rk e t10 and one in the post war period; corresponding with the expansion o f part-tim e work and the em ploym ent o f married women. This pattern o f employment can be partly explained in the character o f migration. Migrants until the post-war period cam e from the depressed areas in the UK and from Eire. The typical migrant before the Second W orld War was w h ite, male, young and single (w ith the exception of the First World W ar period when female m igrant women entered the m unitions industry on a temporary basis.) Indeed male migrants still predom inated in 1951 and 1961 (by the later date the twenty-four to twenty-five age group included 2 1 .000 males representing an increase for 1951. well above the national average o f 3%). This suggests that the young white m ale migrant featured very strongly in the local labour market. It rem ains unclear how far this migration was accompanied by family formation o f the sort which w as to make available a pool o f female workers for the electrical engineering industry during the post-war period, but it remains likely that this was so.

There has been very little work done on the location o f migrant workers in the local labour market, with the exception o f Grainger (1986) and Lancaster (1986). However, whilst Lancaster refers to the early decades o f this century he suggests that the migrant workers filled the semi­ skilled posts in the new industries while local skilled men kept their trade: for instance at the turn o f the century the skilled watchmakers entered the skilled sections o f the cycle trade. Subsequent studies o f the local labour market, with the exception o f Grainger (1986) have generally ignored the importance o f ethnicity and race as aspects o f the experience o f migration and as detenninants o f labour market hiérarchisation, though Grainger’s (1986) study o f Herberts suggests that, as elsewhere. Asian migrants were relegated to the lowest paid and worst jobs. This is an im portant question, and one that needs further investigation; not least for the influence that the m ale migrant wage may have had upon the choices made by female workers, concerning the hours and the rates

o f pay they were prepared to accept.

T o com plete my sketch o f the pattern o f employment in Coventry it is necessary to say something about union organization, for in important respects this conditioned the day to day experience o f work, and indeed extended into partial regulation o f the male semi-skilled market through union based recruitment. As I have shown. Coventry has a long established industrial base which has been characterised by considerable change in the organisation o f work, in pro­ ducts and in the labour market. Trade union organisation too has shown considerable unevenness characterised by patchy organisation during different historical periods and for particular employers and industries. Such unevenness has been demonstrated in the shift from a weak and depleted labour movement in the 1920s to the evolution o f a system o f strong collective bargain­ ing particularly in the post war era. The 1920s and 1930s had witnessed the defeat o f the engineering workers epitomised by the 1922 lockout. Unemployment caused by the depression in the 1920s and 1930s further eroded the strength o f the unions through a reduction in member­ ship. Throughout the inter-war period union weakness was reflected in fluctuating patterns o f employment for workers, low pay. and arbitrary management.

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18-From the 1940s onwards local management-union relationships were characterized by ele­ ments o f corporatism. This implied participation on the part o f the unions but again it is impor­ tant not to gloss o ver what this m e a n t It would seem that in the interests o f productivity and profits some managements conceded or delegated aspects o f the organization o f PBR systems and jo b allocation for a time to workplace trade unions in the form o f stewards and convenors. This would appear to have been an attractive option for som e employers. However. Tolliday (1986) documents the varied management response to the emerging unions in the 1940s, and shows that many of the local employers posed a serious challenge to the growth and strength of the unions. The aircraft em ployers and Rootes as well as Herberts challenged the unions and the right o f JS SC 's to operate, and while the unions at Rootes sustained th eir effectiveness they failed to do this at Herberts. Tolliday's explanation o f this emphasizes H erbert's paternalism as well as the large number o f wom en workers em ployed on a temporary basis during the war. He also shows that throughout the 1950s the unions remained weak at Herberts, threatened in the 1960s with a further decline when the metal industries and male em ploym ent began to slide, underlying the uneveness o f workplace union organization in Coventry. Despite these examples the 1950s showed important continuities with the strong union representation established in the aircraft and the motor industry during the war.

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-Women and the Coventry Labour Market

W here did women fit into this picture.? It would appear that nationally domestic service was still the main source of female employment until the outbreak o f the First W orld War when women entered the munitions industries. Drawing on some o f the discussions with my respon­ dents it would appear that many C oventry women found employm ent in this sector too. During this period also another important em ployer o f women in the Coventry labour market was the "old" silk and ribbon industry. For instance, the silk and ribbon industry in 1891 employed 2,505 female workers as com pared with 753 male workers. The mechanised sector o f watchmak­ ing also employed female labour. Therefore at the end o f the century the main employer of women in the industrial sector o f the Coventry labour market was the old silk industry and the mechanized sector o f watchmaking.

Industrial development in C oventry during this period paralleled industrial development in the Midlands with the birth o f the "new industries" which Glucksman (1986) has emphasized brought in the new factory system characterised by a system o f standardised production, and the dominance o f semi-skilled work w hich increasingly drew on female labour. However, of the "new industries" settling in Coventry only electrical engineering and to a lesser degree Cour- taulds (w ho had links with the "old" silk industry) became significant employers of female labour, with the GEC sharing increasingly in this direction through the inter and into the post war period. Although the beginning o f this century saw a shift in mechanical engineering from the production o f heavy goods to other "new industries" like motor, aircraft manufacture and their components industries, they were not to become important employers o f female labour in the Coventry labour market. For instance in 1901 the cycle trade, the forerunner to the m otor indus­ try, employed 560 women as opposed to 5,551 male workers. This pattern continued so that by the 1910s, the cycle and the m otor industry together employed only a fraction o f women in their work force:

"Cycle and m otor manufacture, excluding dealers had 5372 men, and only 602 women."11

This shows that the major sectors am ong the ’new industries' offered little work for women and suggests that only a few o f the new employers became m ajor recruiters o f female labour. It would appear that many of the 'new industries' retained links with past traditions in their selec­ tion o f workers, in that the mechanical engineering sector in the new guise o f the vehicle industry continued an established pattern o f m ale employment. This suggests that the pattern o f male segregation in this sector can be partly explained by its historical development. For instance, male skilled engineering workers dom inated the cycle trade, and som e o f these became the first engineers in the evolution o f the vehicle industry. M oreover the mechanical engineering indus­ tries locally were m ale dominated at the turn o f the century. For instance. Lancaster (1986) has shown that in 1896 taking mechanical engineering employers as a whole, out of a total workforce o f 10,000 workers only 20% were wom en. Both the m otor and the aircraft industry were to become major em ployers o f male labour with women workers in sexually segregated jobs which reflected some aspect o f their domestic role. In particular they becam e machinists in trim shops working on the seat covering o f vehicles. Thus the m otor industry became a gender specific employer in that m ost o f their manual workers were male.

A parallel pattern o f continuities can be observed when looking at Courtaulds, another example o f a 'n ew industry', but in this case o f female employment. This continuity is sug­ gested by the link between Courtaulds and the 'o ld ' silk industry, Courtaulds established itself in the location of the 'o ld ' silk industry and relied heavily on female labour with 75% o f its work force female.12 Both o f these cases are examples o f continuities in sectoral sexual segregation. However, I do not wish to argue that these continuities were absolute. Firstly my evidence on historical continuities has to recognize the significant disruptions which I have already noted as characteristic o f both world wars. Consideration o f these periods suggests that the continuities I have been explaining were actively reconstituted, rather that passively reproduced, by the activi­ ties o f both employers and especially m ale workers at key moments in the Coventry labour market.

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-A s elsew here the labour market was disturbed temporarily during the First W orld War when women w e re em ployed under the conditions o f the Tem porary Employment o f W om en's Agree­ ment in the production of munitions. Women temporarily carried out 'm ale' jobs and were paid a portion o f th e male rate for the job, but there were considerable disputes between workers and em ployers regarding the temporary employment o f women, for the employers saw this as an opportunity to extend the dilution o f male skilled labour. Although jobs were reserved for male workers, th e entry of women into work signalled that the proportion o f skilled com pared with sem i-skilled jo b s had decreased. Against this background the agreement rested on the reservation of jobs fo r m ale workers after the war.

T h e p re -w a r patterns o f sectoral sexual segregation were to be re-established during the inter-war p eriod. Nevertheless according to my interview material the profusion o f m otor em ployers an d weak unionization allowed some o f the women I interviewed to find jobs in the motor indu stry during in the inter-war period. Some o f the earlier women were em ployed in R otherham s, the watchmakers in the 1920's. While women filled the semi skilled jobs in the machine sh o p sections in watchmaking, the jobs they did when they moved into the m otor indus­ try often reflected women's 'dom estic role', for the women concerned report being em ployed in sem i-skilled w ork as sewing machinists, a few were polishers, while here and elsewhere (w ith the exception o f the GEC) married women were denied opportunities in waged work.

H o w e v er during the inter-war period Courtaulds and GEC were the two most important em ployers o f women; in 1939 GEC employed 3,450 women and Courtaulds 2,700.*3 The other major d iscontinuity was o f a somewhat different sort, because it involved the establishm ent of a new firm an d industry which was exceptional in having no obvious precursor. However, a third em ployer o f w om en in the inter-war period was BTH the electrical engineering com pany where, as I have already noted there was no obvious sectoral precursors. This meant that female employ­ ment w as largely segregated in two industries: electrical engineering and synthetic silk, and to a lesser d eg ree in watchmaking in the earlier part o f the interwar decades.

The outbreak o f the S econd World War again temporarily widened the scope o f w om en's em ploym ent For a second tim e In the 20th century women entered the mechanical engineering industry: locally this m eant w ork in the Shadow Factories which had begun manufacturing air­ craft and commodities for the w ar effo rt while Alfred Herbert the m achine tool producer also employed large numbers o f wom en. Women were em ployed on 'm ale' jo b s because o f a labour shortage, a situation w hich potentially advanced another aspect o f the em ployers' interest, namely to establish cheaper wages. It was on this issue that the trade unions contested the employment o f women.

The underlying rationale o f the Extended Employment o f W om en's Agreement was that it guaranteed male jobs and essentially defined women as temporary w orkers, while guaranteeing women male rates o f pay so long as it could be supported that they w ere doing the same job as the male who had vacated it. A n examination of the Em ployer Works Conference M inutes shows that initially women replaced youth and juvenile labour and were thus denied the male rate for the job. Even in situations w here women replaced skilled male workers o r were on jobs usually carried out by male workers the employers used other arguments, for instance that the definition o f w om en's work varied according to district and tradition, to avoid paym ent o f the male rate for the job. In one instance R ootes Securities (an anti-union employer according to Tolliday 1986) opened a new plant in order to d o this, and having recruited female workers, argued that the work they did could only be 'w o m en ’s work.’14 There are other instances documented where employers actually laid o ff m ale workers without redeploying them. In these conditions w om en's entry into 'm ale' work was contested.

Whilst employers m ade vociferous efforts to recruit women, (and the C P was increasingly energetic in encouraging their recruitment, see Hinton 1980): Croucher (1982) suggests that women were not over keen to enter employment, making voluntary recruitm ent unsuccessful and pushing ahead conscription. W om en also resisted the workplace discipline according to Summertield (1977). though she suggests that such resistance was offered mainly by single

2 4

-women u opposed to married -women, citing the latter's greater mobility as the underlying expla­ nation for this difference in response.15

A t local level the EEF debated the issue o f pay as an incentive to female workers. Some saw the low rate on offer as a disincentive and circum vented this by paying 400% bonus pay­ ments. For instance women at Rootes Securities were earning up to £5.0s Od per week when fac­ tories like the GEC paid a little over £2.0s.0d. However the high wages earned were often a result o f overtime. While women had an opportunity o f working 'm ale' jobs they were denied equal rates of pay, and indeed com panies like the G EC exhibited considerable labour shortage and labour turnover.16

One o f the effects o f the presence o f large num bers o f female workers in male jobs was that according to Croucher (1982) it brought about a change in both trade union attitude and strategy to female workers. During the war the skilled unions opened their doors for the first time to women workers. Evidence o f this developm ent can be observed at local level when the AEUW began to compete with the TGWU for fem ale m em bership.17 Thus in conjunction with the conso­ lidation o f the unions in the workplace w om en were successfully recruited. Croucher (1982) sug­ gests on the basis o f national trends that fem ale m em bership in many shops was 100% and by the end o f 1944 the combined female m em bership o f the AEU W and the TGW U had well over 900,000, while he notes that in the C oventry district 30 women stewards were involved in nego­ tiation and by June 1943 had made 11 appearances at W orks Conferences.

Despite this women stewards had very little influence on the local JS S C 's or on union pol­ icy agendas. The little impact they had w as more on health and safety issues. Women in membership failed to persuade unions to take on board the issues specific to women like the prob­ lems associated with work and home, when wom en worked very long hours, found childminding difficult and shopping equally problem atic.18 Nakamura (1984) found that married women were

'* It ii w orth noting that although Sum m erfield's com m ent refers to w omen in the context o f a wider la­ bour m arket, it may also draw on the Coventry e x perience, for she partly relied on the inform ation provided by Mass Observation which included a focus on the C oventry labour m a rk e t

16 EE F Minutes 1940-63.

reluctant to continue at work after the war. and this decision on the part o f the women may well have been influenced by the difficulties experienced in com bining home and w ork responsibilities during th e war. Several features contributed to such difficulties; most important were the lack o f adequate child care facilities, the inadequacy o f a wage capable o f sustaining the cost of child- m inding. and the demands m ade on the women concerned. T h is set o f circum stances made work­ ing on a full-time basis very difficult. There were very few part-time jobs available during the war w hich might suggest why women with considerable responsibilities m ight be reluctant to work. Another important factor was the foregone conclusion that women w ould vacate their war-tim e posts once hostilities ended. This had been the basic tenet o f the Extended Employment o f W o m en's Agreement w hich ensured the reservation o f jo b s for male workers in sectors of the post-w ar economy that had hitherto, been male dominated. Therefore those opportunities as pro­ duction workers which existed for women during the w ar w ere not generally continued after­ wards.

Post-w ar the deeping sexual segregation o f the labour m arket was characteristic of pre-war patterns o f employment. Such a pattern o f development can be partly explained by four distinct features in the evolution o f sectoral employment and represented distinctive discontinuity and a break with past traditions; the growth of female employment, the growth electrical engineering in the guise o f the G EC, the development o f this sector as a m ajor recruiter o f w om en workers, and the grow th o f part-time employment. Far from emulating the vehicle m anufacturing sector where established patterns of recruitment featured the dominance o f full-tim e and m ale employment: in contrast the G EC adopted patterns of recruitment, predominantly featuring w om en workers, and while offering full-time jobs also made work available on a part-tim e basis. W hile in the previ­ ous decades with the exception o f the disruption caused by the war, the engineering industries m aintained a predominantly male labour force, the G EC in the 1950s and 1960s established a predominanly female labour m arket

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26-As I have previously mentioned it is likely that the two waves o f m igration lead to the for­ mation o f families providing labour for local employers in the post-war period. Even then evi­ dence suggests that em ployers incorporated very strong gender preferences in their recruitment strategies, a point illustrated in the following comment:

"However in C oventry women form a smaller proportion o f the engineering workforce than they do nationally. In 1976. there were 5.269 women employed full-tim e and 343 part-time in the car industry; w om en comprised 10% o f the total workforce, and 7% o f these worked part-time. And 2961 women worked full-time and 411 worked part-tim e in mechanical engineering."19

This then suggests that jobs in the traditional engineering sector were filled by male workers on a full-time basis. Yet this does not explain why there were few women w orkers, because the absence o f women cannot sim ply be equated with the absence o f part-time work. Drawing on the discussions with my respondents, it seems that such jobs were not open to w om en, and that the jobs that were available to wom en were in the electrical engineering industry. T h e GEC had been expanding throughout the w ar period, a trend that was to continue during the following decades until the 1970s. The adoption o f a labour intensive labour process continuously created a need for labour, which the com pany sought to secure through the recruitment o f fem ale workers. In the context o f a labour shortage the demand for labour often seemed to exceed the supply; such competitiveness would have appeared to have led to the com pany's adoption o f more innovative recruitment strategies, such as offering work on a part-time basis. It would also seem that the increased availability o f part-tim e work at GEC increased the supply o f fem ale labour for as Beechey and Perkins (1987) in their excellent study suggest that employers saw part-time work as a recruitment strategy in a period o f labour shortage, and women with dom estic responsibilities largely responded. While this is undoubtedly a valid point it does not explain why a priori the GEC recruited female labour in preference to male workers. Explanations for the GEC'» choose o f a predominantly female labour force still remains an open question, although in the following

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-CHAPTER THREE

The Developm ent of the GEC in Coventry: an Outline. W om en's Employment at GEC

As I have already indicated early in this century the GEC joined the growing num ber of new industries in Coventry. The Peel Connor Telephone Works shifted to Coventry from M an­ chester in the early 1920's. It first acquired a small workshop in Stoke and this was the start of the fledgling company, making it the second electrical engineering em ployer in the area. In this chapter I intend to provide an outline o f the significance o f w om en's employment at the GEC, and its relationship to developments in the product market, labour process, job structure and pay­ ment systems characteristic o f the G EC factories.

Several features o f the local labour market initially attracted the company to Coventry. These included the availability o f female labour and a range o f skills.1 Much later the company claimed that:

"Coventry had been deliberately chosen to become the centre o f telephone manufacture because the fine work involved was the kind to which the workers in the city had long been established.”3

Coventry had a reputation as an artisan city and skills were available but according to the following excerpt the company had rather more precise labour requirements than this would imply:

"Well in the 1920s when it w as Peel Connor Works they had as many girls as they could get, and these then composed about four fifth o f the labour force. Getting women was an economic exercise, women were cheaper and Coventry was oriented towards female employment. Places like BTH and Rotherhams had many wom en operatives. But GEC was keen to have as many women as possible, it was almost purely economic; they were

cheaper and cost less."3

This com m ent makes a number o f important points. It considers that about 80% o f the ear­ lier com pany's workforce w e n wom en, and that the company was actively selecting and recruit­ ing women, since it was assumed they were available and were cheaper in the Coventry labour market. It also suggests that the com pany regarded both the BTH, which produced heavy electri­ cal goods, and Rotherhams, a mechanised sector o f watchmaking, as possible sources o f labour.

The com pany’s heavy dependence on female labour remained characteristic o f the G EC ’s employment patterns in the 1930s. Referring to this period a former Works Manager recollected that:

"In the 1930s something like around 80% o f our manual workers were women."4 A later Personnel Manager elaborated on the long established pattern o f female employment and the work experience involved:

"Women have always been an ideal labour force for us. It was a tradition that went back to the 1920s. In the very early days the com pany's workforce comprised o f nearly all women. Even in the early days they worked the big presses and it was traditional once...we followed that. O f course in the electrical engineering sections, especially in assembly, and all the hand work where the work becam e fundamentally repetitive and it was always light, we found was especially suited to women. Young women with good eyesight and very nimble lingers are very capable of doing the work."3

This com m ent is a strong endorsement of the com pany's preference for women. Women were assumed to possess particular competences suited to the com pany's labour requirements. Another retired personnel manager elaborated on the stereotypes involved:

"Well it was found that girls particularly could easily do dexterous work. They had smaller hands and were more nimble fingered. And if you were a girl living in Coventry in the

1 Interview with R etired W orks Manager (b.1923) (Worked a t O E C 1927-77)

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30-1930s and fancied working in a factory you went to the GEC. I had two spinster aunts there w ho were astounded that I went there to do my apprenticeship. You see it was almost inev­ itable that as a girl you took a jo b at GEC .6

According to this account the company had by the 1930s established itself as an employer o f women. From the data available it m ay be concluded that the com pany's preference for women was linked to the availability o f female labour, assumptions about w om en's competences, and the low er cost o f female labour. In this sense the company appeared to assume that the work offered was suited to women since they were assumed to possess the manual skills required.

The evidence from these managers also suggested that low pay played a key role in the com pany's predilection to employ women. The claim that Coventry provided not only cheap labour but particularly that women in the engineering industry were badly paid has resonance in other sources, which suggests that wages for women were low in the industry in Coventry during the 1930s. For instance, in a conference held in May, 1937, between the Coventry and District Engineering Employers Association and the TGW U, the union explained:

"W omen were concerned with the rate o f 4d per hour for women in engineering. The union claim that both women laundry workers and women cleaners got more money. The union claim that engineering was a sweated trade as far as women were concerned."

The district base rate then for women in the engineering industry for a 47 hour week was £1.3s.8d. The minute continued:

"We contend there m ust be som e skill in the work the women are doing, otherwise it would not be necessary for skilled men to be placed on the jobs. These girls are doing work which is at least semi-skilled and are on a basic o f less than 50% o f that o f a man who sweeps the floor."7

This exam ple provides some sense that the relative level o f wages for women in the local jo b market was considered low at a time when the dem and for female labour was rising. Four years later it was pointed out to the engineering employers that:

"The M inistry of Transport attem pted to recruit women workers from the aircraft and m uni­ tions to work as bus conductors, starting pay was 69s.6d for a 48 hour week guaranteed. This would rise to 76s. after 6 months training. Transport required a relatively small number o f women, but the M inistry o f Labour pointed out the difficulty if firms are paying anything less than £3 .10s. for a 48 hour week.8

This then suggests that not all mem bers o f the Association were able to compete with the M inistry o f Transport for women workers. In a survey on rates o f pay for women in local engineering firms in November, 1941, it was found that:

"W om en's rates ranged from £2. 18s. lOd to £4. 4s. 6d. for a 47 hour week for women aged twenty-one and over."9

This shows that although wages for women had improved in the engineering industry, there were still considerable differentials between employers. The G EC during this period found it difficult to obtain sufficient female workers for it seems that it was one o f the local employers who continued to offer low pay.

Drawing on a variety o f different sources of information I will now attempt to convey some sense o f the continuing importance o f women to the company. The large proportion o f female manual labour can be explained by the nature o f the work organisation and the sexual division o f labour. The work was labour intensive and women did m ost o f the production tasks on the shop floor with the exception o f skilled work such as on maintenance, and in the toolroom, and labour­ ing. During a visit to the personnel office I was able to view a set o f photographs depicting the earliest organisation of work at the Stoke plant and observed that women appeared in most o f the shops with the exception o f the toolroom, although they seemed to be confined to segregated

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-sections in some o f the shops. The comments o f the managers quoted above suggest that once established this pattern exhibited substantial continuity. Nevertheless the post war expansion o f the company witnessed an increase in the total num ber o f workers and an increase in the number o f women workers Becchey and Perkins provide an outline o f employment trends in electricals (which more or less equates with the GEC) in Coventry:

"With the exception o f brief periods of decline total employment in the industry rose steadily from 1948-1970. The male employment rate broadly followed the total em ploy­ ment rate, with a progressive trend upwards, but declines in the level o f employment were less sharp for men than for the total workforce. The female employment rate also followed the total rate but periods o f cyclical unemployment were felt more severely by women and when total employment peaked (1963 and 1970), rises in female employment were particu­ larly sharp."10

This shows that female labour continued to play a crucial role in the production process but also highlights the distinctive ways in which women experienced the fluctuations o f employment during the post-war boom.

According to Chesterman. developments during the post war period meant that by 1971: 'T h e Company had six factories in Coventry em ploying a workforce o f 9,727 o f whom 3.800 were wom en."11

This showed that the total num ber o f workers increased dramatically over the five decades o f the com pany's existence, but that women as a proportion o f the total num ber had declined com pared with earlier 1920s estimate, when 80% o f the shop floor were said to be women. It should be noted that these figures do not indicate what proportion o f women were hourly paid manual workers, or represented other categories o f workers. However in a recent interview a m em ber o f personnel m anagement suggested that:

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34-when the company acquired 140 acres o f land at Copsewood Stoke accom m odating 2,000 work­ ers in a single plant. By 1936 the company had established itself in other areas within the city, buying sites from Triumph, L ea Francis (a declining m otor manufacturer) and from a Stamping Company, However it was during the immediate post war decades that m ost grow th occurred. Marriot and Jones report that betw een 1947 and 1933 the company spent £20 m illion nationally on plant and buildings. In C oventry the Company acquired the Spon Street plant, a five storey high building, from the Rudge C om pany in the late 1940’s. Over the next decade plants were obtained and established at Ford Street, Hood Street and Queen Victoria Road, while in 1962 the main works at Stoke transferred o n e o f its sections to a new site at Brandon Road. O f this later move the Loudspeaker explained:

'T h is self contained unit has its ow n stores, production control, cable forming, coil winding, assembly and wiring sections. M ost o f the people we saw there had moved with a section from the Telephone Works. O ther workers will travel from Binley."15

As in other cases this m ove not only represented a transfer o f a section, as it was reported that 400 extra workers were to be recruited. Furthermore the fact that some shifts would be part- time underlined that women workers w ere the target.

By the early 1960s the com pany had about eight sites in Coventry spread throughout the city, three in the city centre with the remainder situated close to working class areas in the outly­ ing suburbs.

During the immediate post w ar period the company had a preference for heavy plant pro­ ducts but the Coventry sites had a long tradition in the lighter side o f electrical engineering. Pro­ ducts manufactured locally included different varieties o f telecommunications system s, some domestic consumer products, radar for the Ministry o f Defence during the war. and later products for the nuclear industry.

T h e Peel Connor Telephone Works from its establishm ent in the 1920’s was able to under­ take th e com plete manufacture o f the following products; automatic and manual exchange equip­ ment, w ireless sets, loudspeakers and wireless accessories.16 The main site at Stoke developed this into th e Strougher Telecommunications System and also produced wireless sets. During the war y ears the telephone grew in importance, but the w ar effort also allowed the company to diversify slightly in its range o f products, or it benefited from lucrative government contracts for the p roduction of radar equipment.

In th e immediate post w ar years the development o f the electricity industry accompanied by its nationalisation in 1947, as well as the electrification o f domestic properties created a growing demand fo r domestic consum er goods. While the C om pany had an established history locally in the m anufacture o f wirelesses, it also began to produce television sets, a product characterized by a seasonal pattern of demand. Televisions were produced at the Spon Street Plant and received a great d eal o f publicity locally, emphasising the use o f standardized mass production techniques. In 1934 th e company began to manufacture products fo r the nuclear industry. In many ways however there was very little diversification o f products o v er the period under review because the main pro du ct, the Strougher System continued to be produced until the 1970s when it was replaced by System X.

D uring the post war decades the company enjoyed a safe domestic market for its telecom­ m unication systems, supplying the Post Office with the Strougher system. Markets were also secured o verseas in Commonwealth countries, as the com pany benefited from B ritain's colonial heritage an d more importantly from the com pany's involvem ent in an international cartel where markets w ere carved up between participants which discouraged competition from potential Telecom m unications technology through until the late 1960s was based on electro­ mechanical engineering. The Strougher system was o f this type and retained this characteristic

3 6

-throughout its modifications. One implication o f this was that there were only marginal change in work processes, for as th e works manager explained:

"The Cross Bar was th e first electric, but it w a sn 't new. it was o f course new to the GEC. It was a Swedish E rikson Design and we only got it in the late 1960's. So you see we had gone a whole thirty y ears or more with the sam e technology. Well let m e give you an example. We made a relay or a coil with a w ire around it, and when a current was passed through it, it m agnetised and drew an arm iture towards it. C ontact w as made. Now this piece o f electro m echanical equipment while it did not remain as it was, it w as continuously being made better, b u t th e changes were modifications. All it m eant was a modification in design which was transm itted to a blue print. O u r current labour could then be retrained to deal with that-"17

This point was confirm ed by another long serving manager:

"Electro mechanical in all its varieties stayed put in its basic needs for skills, and you only changed the drawings s o it was mere modification."18

These comments suggests that there were few major changes in the production process associated with the S trougher System, the com pany’s main product. According to Kelly (1983) such consistency and narrow range of product often leads to standardized mass production tech­ niques, though in the case o f the GEC the following factors constrained this development. Firstly some o f the subcom ponents for the products were difficult to operationalise in this fashion, and there was a preference for a labour intensive process with little capital outlay. Thus while Taylorist and Fordist principles were incorporated into the labour process. Taylorism took precedence. One aspect o f Fordism , flow line assembly was developed but seemed to take a rather primitive form: it often only involved a m anual line and later a type o f m echanised belt, retaining labour intensity and the use o f simple hand tools and processes. Thus throughout the period I discuss work was organized in assembly in one of two ways, which depended on the