Agreement on wages and conditions of service for forest workers in the Forestry Commission – 1961
The scanned images of the booklet are courtesy of Richard Siddons from Wales. This is an interesting document and sets out the conditions when forest workers and foresters worked a 45 hour week with variable daily working hours depending on the season of the year. From the first Monday in February to the second Sunday in November the working week consisted of 9 hour days from Monday to Friday. Once the day light hours shortened in the remainder of the year they worked an 8.5 hour day Monday and Tuesday, 8 hours Wednesday to Friday and 4 hours on a Saturday to make up the 45 hours total. The basic adult wage was £3 12s 6p per week with additional ‘leads’ for skills.
See the complete booklet in the PDF below.
It appears that at some point shortly after (When?) the week was shortened to 43 hours but the normal 5 day working week in the longer daylight hours as above was 44 hours and in the winter with Saturday working stopped the working week was 40 hours over the five days. Presumably this averaged out over the 12 months to a 43 hour week.
Probably in relation to other rural workers the wages were similar but at the forestry workers had quite long paid holiday breaks and reasonable sick pay conditions which may not have been the case for their rural and farm working colleagues.
It is worth noting the amongst other conditions the payments for wet time, additional supplements for wet drains, working with creosote and fire watching or standby duties. These were all points that were discussed (sometimes heatedly between foresters and workers) on some occasions in a year!
Comments very welcome.