Lesson six

Factory Life—A Student’s Experience

This summer, like many students, I took a job in a small factory to help subsidise my University grant during the coming term. Having just left school, I had never had a full-time job before and so I was quite looking forward to it. I decided to work for 8 weeks and thought it might even prove to be quite enjoyable. Here I made my biggest mistake ever! I dutifully turned up one cold morning in July at 8 a.m., all ready to start work. The factory produces bleach and washing-up liquid. My first job was to feed empty plastic bottles onto the assembly line. The conveyor belt was divided into compartments and one bottle had to go in each compartment.

As the belt was moving very fast, I could hardly keep up with it, and, spilling bottles in all directions, I shouted to the supervisor,’ What happens when you miss one?’ Back came the grim reply’ You never miss one!’ Oh well, only another 71 hours… 2The next day I was moved into the bleach department where I made up cardboard boxes and helped to fill them with full bottles of bleach. I found that the sharp cardboard often cut into my hands and wrists and that the cuts were soon filled with bleach which splashed over the bottles. Ironically the bottles themselves carried the warning:’ If splashed onto clothing or skin, wash immediately’! Of course the assembly line did not

stop when I wanted to—wash the bleach from my cuts!

Eventually I was given a pair of gloves, but these were only cotton and were in shreds by the end of the day. Also the plastic apron I had been given provided no protection for my clothes.

I walked home on the 2nd day, coughing because of the bleach fumes, my ears still ringing from the noise and my hands stinging. My enthusiasm was definitely wavering.

During this first week, other’ exciting’ jobs I was given included taking hot bottles from a printing machine( no gloves provided) and taking heavy boxes full of bottles from one end of the factory to the other. By the end of the week. I was exhausted and bruised and received for my troubles just over ￡17(this was without paying tax ).

Talking to the regular workers, I found that they considered my week quite a nice one as I had at least had some variety. Many of them had done the same boring job year after year. One girl had been there for 9 years and her only job 8 hours a day was to put tops on bottles as they came past her on a conveyor belt. She couldn’t even sit down. I was told that she was mentally retarded. Whether this was the case before she started her job is another question!

In my second week I was put in the department where the bottles were made. Here the machines were liable to jam up and some even caught fire. When my machine jammed up I was casually told to put my

hand in and pull out the hot plastic!

Many new parts were needed for the machines but the mechanics told me that a lot of the machines were German and some were very old, so that it was either too expensive or impossible to get new parts.

Meanwhile the machines constantly broke down or went wrong so that workers spent most of their time endangering themselves by trying to work with them. During the short time that I have been there, there has been one broken leg, an injured arm and many burns.

As a lot of production is lost through the inefficiency of these machines the management make up for this by increasing the speed of the machines and the assembly lines until it is very difficult for the workers to keep up with them. Also, in this department there were two other mentally retarded people: one young girl who could not keep up with her machine at all, and one old bloke who often got caught up in wires and things whilst trying to clean the machines.

As the temperatures rose during the summer, the ventilation proved totally inadequate and we were working in temperatures well over 90 degrees. As if this was not bad enough, one day a leak developed in the main bleach container and the fumes were just overwhelming. For the first time in the history of the factory, the workers downed tools!

The management was amazed and quite unable to cope with the situation. Perhaps they thought that their sleepy town was immune from

such ‘ nonsense’—they were in for a surprise! Unfortunately a large number of workers( nearly all of them women, and a lot of them part-timers) were not members of the union and without this strength behind them, the workers were soon persuaded to return to work. But these workers learnt a lot from that very short strike and I feel sure that many of them will now join the union.

Now I am finishing work this week and I feel that in 8 weeks in the factory I have learnt much more about the nature of our society than I ever did in 7 years in a grammar school. A lot of what I saw and experienced I should like to forget, but that is not possible as during my 5th week I managed to sit on some boiling hot plastic which had spilled from the machine. So now I can never forget the factory—I am branded for life!