The employers at Cradley Heath in the West Midlands refused to pay the new wage rate. About women workers began a strike , going on daily marches. Macarthur made a film exposing the miserable conditions of the chainmakers, which won the strikers much support and the strike gained momentum.
Collections were held outside church congregations and football grounds. The remaining employers were boycotted until, 6 weeks later, they too agreed to pay.
On 22 October, the women won a minimum wage for the first time in history, doubling their pay to 11s 3d a week. For more on the Cradley Heath chain makers, see: Chainmakers.
Skip to main content. About Glossary References. Examine Examine 20 mins. What does "social revolution" mean? How did women's entry into the workplace during WW1contribute to the war effort? What was the main message in the government's propaganda film shown in 'Women at War'?
Discuss Discuss 15 mins. Why were the women workers called "canaries"? What were the long term impacts of women's entry into the workplace during the World War I? Women munition workers sorting shells during the First World War. Compare Compare 30 mins. Free learning resources from arts, cultural and heritage organisations. And the girl who speeds the lift from floor to floor,. There's the girl who does a milk-round in the rain,. Female Factory Worker in Overalls. Only 19 herself when war broke out, Hamilton was raised in a house with two parlour maids, two housemaids, two kitchen maids, a housekeeper, and a resident handyman — demonstrating the broad spectrum of social class as well as age to be found working together for the war effort.
They were working together in dark, airless, grimy buildings without any kind of heating during the bitterly cold winters.
Although Hamilton herself endured long shifts — from seven in the morning until seven at night, six days a week — her young workmate was always there before she started and worked an hour or two after she left. When she asked the foreman about him, however, she was told not to worry: with his father away at war and other mouths to feed at home, he would be happy to bring as much money back to his mother as he could.
Hamilton was paid a pound a week, but she assumed a child would be paid much less. However, this organisation was not established until late December , by which time so many existing factories had been turned over to weapons production that the department was only able to focus on the new, purpose-built sites springing up all over the country in response to the shortage of weaponry at the Front.
Hamilton recalls the vast difference in conditions at the various factories she worked in. Whilst the new sites were well-equipped and closely monitored, some of the smaller ad hoc ones, which were even more likely to employ youngsters, often had little or nothing in the way of support and facilities. As she worked nights, and the foreman was on the dayshift, any steel chip she got in her eye would have to wait until morning for him to remove with his penknife.
This helped contribute to agreed suitable conditions by which a woman could be employed, and the War Office published several guides as to the employment of women. This was an agreement made between management and trade unions that assisted in replacing skilled workers with unskilled or semi-skilled workers including older men, women and the disabled.
The unions accepted this proposal on three main conditions; firstly that laws would be put in place to stop people making profits out of the war; that the measures would only last for the duration of the war; and thirdly that women would get paid the same wages as the men.
This measure was put in place to maintain the rate at which male workers were paid, rather than out of solidarity with the suffragette movement or recognition of equal pay, as demonstrated by the evidence submitted by the National Union of Clerks in
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