Durris Forest Workers A6 Timesheets 1947 -1948
The Booklet is Courtesy of Moray and Aberdeenshire Forest District, Huntly. This very rare timesheet booklet gives a valuable insight into the pay scales of forest workers, the wage payment regime and the work progamme of a forest from December 1947 through to July 1948. It should be remembered that this was a time when demobbed service people were being allocated work in as many work programmes as possible and that the Forestry Commission was used as a work source taking on many people to help with enlarged planting and road making programmes. The majority of people only stayed until something more suited to their needs became available and one can see that from the start to the finish of the book the number of workers drops from 29 to 12. The latter number which would appear to be closer to the actual squad size suited to the regular forest work programme.
Some of the names of the workers employed are:
W Legg - E Legg – D Legg – G Legg - N Legg - T Davidson – WA Davidson - J Davidson - J Berry – GL Bruce – GM Bruce - W McLeod– E Reid – EW Reid – J Reid – W Reid – G Begg – D Skene – F Coutts – W Beaton – W Anderson– J Marshall - G Sey – W Crighton– SM Bruce– J Shearer– J Russell– K McKellar – A Gordon – R Donald – W Massie.
The base rate of pay for a man starting as a Forest Worker appears to be 90/- per week, Grade 3 Forest Worker 92/6 per week and Grade 2 Forest Worker 95/- per week and Grade 1 Forest Worker 98/- per week but as no grades are shown this is a guestimate! The most obvious point is that the men are paid on a fortnightly basis and the timesheet period runs from Thursday to a week Wednesday. It is possible that when the time books were taken in on a Wednesday, the forest clerks and foresters had to start working out the individual pay sums for each person and have it ready for the following day Thursday (or Friday?) which was the normal pay day. Can anyone confirm if this was the case or was it the Thursday following? It is doubtful if much or any tax was deducted but certainly the notes indicate some people at least were paying an insurance stamp.
W Legg seems to have been a tractor driver possibly a ploughing tractor driver and was paid at 98/- per week and Gangers were paid at 101/- per week (101 shillings equivalent to £5.05!). Boys, those younger than 18, were paid much less and a rate of 38/6 per week is noted, possibly for a school leaver. Interestingly G Sey is the horseman and gets the same rate of pay as the Tractor Driver (possibly all classed as Grade 1 Workers) plus payments for weekend chores looking after the horse. Note that E Legg is also paid for tractor driving but this appears to happen when W Legg is promoted to Ganger.
Additional payments are illustrated in a number of situations one of the first being ‘wet drains’ which elicits an extra 1d per hour presumably to cover for the additional expense in waterproof footwear. Perhaps somebody can confirm this? In later years wellington boots were routinely issued (and withdrawn!) and eventually issued permanently. Fire duty and fire standby are conspicuous by their frequency from early spring in this set of timesheets. Attending a fire was paid at the overtime rates if after the normal work hours and fire standby was paid at 10/- per weekend which appears to be good rate in relation to the weekly wage and entailed staying close to a call out point, usually the home, for half of Saturday and all of Sunday (36 hours). Staying on call on a week day night was paid at 2/6 per night. A few people seem to be involved in regular patrols, possibly on bicycles or staying up in high vantage points, looking for any signs of fire and earning up to 18 hours of overtime per weekend! The first two hours of overtime on any week day was at time plus a quarter and there after time plus a half which also may have applied also to Saturday afternoon overtime. Overtime rates are denoted in the time sheets as 11/4 and 11/2.
The annual work programme is not fully illustrated here, however the time sheets do give an insight for part of the year beginning with work in December 1947 which included cross cutting and extracting timber, drains, fencing, tractor driving (ploughing?), some weeding and protection. There is mention of some people working on census, office and surveying. Towards the end of December there is a bit more lost working time and an entry recorded as clearing snow and perhaps the snowy winter started early. By the end of January and into February new drains are being heavily worked on and assume this is on the recently ploughed land and many workers are getting the 1d per hour wet drain bonus. Fire brooms are also in the course of being made. In Mid February planting starts and by the end of the month is a major part of the work schedule along with nursery operations which continues on through March interrupted by the need to fight fires and also to ‘cast turfs’. This latter work may have been the placing of upturned turfs on the ground for planting trees into, in places where the plough could not reach or properly finish off. By April fire patrols and fire standby are significant activities alongside the planting and some new drain work. Towards the end of May the planting of trees has ceased and the squad are adding slag fertiliser to the newly planted areas but some are also brashing, high pruning and starting to thin the older woodlands. This work carries on into July when weeding of nursery seed beds, weeding planted areas, extraction of thinned timber, crosscutting timber and even painting of houses are all in the daily work menu. The last entry in the book is for hire of a horse for extracting timber but no indication of owner although T Davidson appears to be the horseman. The last entries unusually only show one week as the second week of the fortnight has been left blank in all cases indicating a change in Timesheet book or perhaps onto one week time sheets. Can anyone comment? The last pages are taken up with A6 Timebook filling in instructions brusquely penned by P/AH on behalf of S H A Paterson the Head Forester!
Please see the PDF for all the above details and more. The double pages are difficult to show but have been scanned and digitally set out as 5 double pages to one PDF sheet. The image can be enlarged in the PDF mode by using the + button. Hopefully this works okay!
Groups: Forestry Areas, Forestry Records, Booklets and Reports, Northeast Scotland