Equal pay is a no brainer
ALL the recent chatter, verbal and written, about equality for women and equal pay etc has brought a strong whiff of nostalgia into my old life. Back in the 1970s/80s I was general manager of quite a big furniture factory in an oil-rich country in the West Indies.
The price of oil was high, the country was booming and we could sell all the goods we could produce.
But there was a problem: our factory was losing (men) workers daily to the oil fields and the new steel industry. Both offered wages that furniture could not match. Production started to suffer seriously. And then I had one of those light-bulb moments. Every week we had numbers of women coming to the factory looking for work – so what if I offered them the same wages as men so long as they could do men’s work?
I went to see the owner of the company, a very traditional and conservative gentleman from India, with my idea. I was very surprised when he agreed with my proposition without a murmur! I then announced to all the workers that their wives, daughters, girlfriends, sisters should come in to be assessed for work.
We were inundated, and in no time at all the factory had all the workers it could hope for. It was surprising what those ladies, young and old, could do once they put their minds to it! But there were one or two problems: the old rules, written and unwritten, about work place romance (a polite word for it?) had to go out the window. And then came an unexpected problem when many of the men kept leaving their stations on the production lines to “help” any young woman working close by. No ulterior motives of course!
But it was not too long before the exciting novelty wore off and production really picked up again. Sales soared and we soon were able to break all previous production records. When Xmas came around the annual bonuses for all workers surpassed all their wildest hopes. Other factories in the group soon followed suit, with similar success.
Equal pay for women? Surely that is a no brainer – so why are so many employers still dragging their feet? Don’t they want successful companies? Come on in – the water’s lovely!