DIRTY WORK

[Stanley]

DIRTY WORK

25 August 2002

I see that a recent survey has raised the spectre of us being short of skilled manual workers and the most likely cause is that ‘young people don’t like to get their hands dirty’. There is a connection here with my recent comments on bath night, levels of dirt and discomfort which 100 years ago would have been seen as quite acceptable are no longer tolerated and as yet we haven’t abolished dirt.
The TV programmers did some interesting programmes on this subject, they looked at workers who have to deal with sewers, filthy premises, rodent control and infestation with cockroaches etc. The common thread that ran through all the examples they gave was that the people who deal with the nastiest messes we leave behind us always get paid the least. It was ever the same.
In my time I’ve had to clean up after animals, deal with slaughterhouse waste, open blocked drains and even at one point managed the sewage treatment plant at West Marton Dairies for a short while. Now there was an interesting job! It was a mystery to me why, with exactly the same management, the outflow from the plant was clear as gin one day and raw effluent the next. You can take it from one who has done it that waste management is a science!
It isn’t only the public service industries that deal with dirt. 100 years ago every manual job in Barlick was by today’s standards a dirty job. Weavers came home with their hair full of ‘fly’ or as my mother used to call it ‘dirt down’. One of her favourite expressions about me was ‘you’re worse than dirt down!’. Funnily enough, my dad being an Australian, his version was ‘you’re worse than the flies’. The point is that the experience was common enough to enter into the language.
My picture this week is of ‘Paraffin’ Jack Grayson loomsweeping at Bancroft in the 1970s. He spent his day crawling about on the floor in the weaving shed amongst all the moving machinery sweeping and oiling looms. His was the worst paid job in the mill but paradoxically one of the most important. The firebeater in the boiler house was in the same boat, try as you may you can’t deal with coal and ashes all day without getting dirty. These weren’t occasional jobs, they were the normal everyday experience. These jobs still exist in one form or the other, the biggest difference is that most dirty industries have better facilities for cleaning up before you go home and so what was a common sight as little as fifty years ago, people walking down the street in their muck after work, has gone underground. This might be part of the problem, young people grow up being told to keep themselves clean and don’t have the evidence that a different set of rules applies in the real world of work, you can get as dirty as you like! So is it any wonder that they recoil from dirt when looking for a job.
There is another facet of this that worries me. I make it my business to ask young people how much they know about the infrastructure that makes their lives possible and the level of ignorance can be astounding. Take the simple action of turning an electric light switch on when entering a room. You would be amazed at the number of people that haven’t a clue where the electricity comes from or what has to be done to keep it flowing, all they know is that it has to be paid for. Even in a relatively clean industry like the generation of electricity there are numerous dirty and even dangerous jobs that have to be done to make it work, have you ever seen pylon painters at work? The nature of the job is such that they can’t avoid getting covered with paint, they have to have new overalls every day and cover all exposed skin with Vaseline so the paint won’t stick to them, take it from me, it’s a horrible job.
Ninety percent of all electricity is still made by steam produced in boilers burning coal, oil or natural gas. The furnaces have to be maintained and no matter how clean the fuel this is a dirty job. Maintaining the cooling systems in the power station is another dirty task. Even the skilled fitters who work on the generating machinery get their share of dirt, it can’t be avoided. I could bore you for hours with examples like these but what I’d really like to get down to is who does these jobs for us?
The answer to this comes down to how highly paid they are. As a general rule, unless there is someone who has been brought up in the trade, the low paid unskilled jobs are done by recent migrants and poor people. Look at hospital and office cleaners, unskilled foundry workers and anyone doing jobs that involve unsocial hours. This might be the root of the problem. Fifty years ago getting dirty at work wasn’t seen as demeaning but I’m afraid this has changed in this country. There is a loss of status in being dirty, it’s only the natural rebels who go against this. I know a bloke in Australia who, when he first migrated there, got an office job. He gave it up because he wanted to go home dirty at night so that people would know he had a ‘proper’ job. I can identify with that because that’s how I was brought up, there was no shame in ‘honest muck’. We seem to be losing that distinction.
It may be hard for the younger ones to accept some of this week’s opinions. Just ask yourself the question, who cleans the lavatory in your house? Does it make them a lesser person? Of course not, it’s all part of real life and as far as I’m concerned, the people who do the mucky jobs are the heroes. Can we please not look down on them.
25 August 2002