CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Womaning the Factory
Ian and I showed up promptly at eight on Monday morning, ready to meet our new workmen and get them all to work.
We’d taken the subway there, and rather than ride our private elevator up to our offices, we went up the public elevators to the main plant floor. Barb had said that our new people would be there at seven, to start getting things squared away, so we expected to find dozens of men working diligently. The doors opened and we got our first shock of the day.
We didn’t have any manpower in our facility.
We had woman power. Working around the huge lathes, mills and overhead cranes, there was not a single male human being. All of the machinists, skilled tradesmen, and repairmen were beautiful young women.
Now, back in Michigan, I’d heard all of the women’s complaints about the inequalities in the workplace, and for the most part, I sympathized with them. I mean, if somebody was working next to me, doing exactly the same job that I was doing, but was bringing home twice what I was being paid, I wouldn’t be happy. And if I was making half what that person was, just because of a little biological accident, I’d be downright pissed! If I was being passed up for promotions, if the good work I’d done was not being credited, and I was simply not being taken seriously for the same non-reason, I’d be ready to revolt! If I was the last to be hired, and the first to be laid off, and given all the shit jobs in between, I’d be about ready to head up into the hills with a rifle and a bandolier of ammo to rectify the situation!
But I was never on the receiving end of that sort of discrimination, so my feelings were all sort of on an intellectual level.
On that spring morning in 1971, I couldn’t help having a gut feeling that there was something inherently wrong when you see a small, pretty woman in coveralls loading a three-ton casting into the jaws of a lathe with an eight-foot throw. Yes, she was using an overhead crane to do it with, just as any man would have had to do, but there still seemed to be a wrongness about it all.
I could see that Ian was even more upset about the whole thing than I was, so I steered him back into the elevator, even though half the women in the shop had seen us come out. We went down to the subway level, crossed over to our private elevator, and then went up to the hallway between our offices.
I made a right and went to my office, and Ian followed me. I sat behind my desk and pressed the button marked “secretary.”
An attractive woman came in immediately, smiled and said, “Yes, sir?”
Which was just fine, except that she was dressed in the fashion which most of the women at my mansion had adopted. That is to say, in nothing but a pair of skimpy shoes. I mean, yes, she was pretty, she was well built, and nakedness looked very nice on her, but was this lack of clothing conducive to a proper working environment?
Ignoring the clothing issue for the moment, I said, “Please have my majordomo, Barbara, and Ian’s Ming Po come here immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
As she left, Ian said, “From the looks of things, we don’t have a workforce, here. We’ve got another fucking harem!”
Before I could answer, and explain that fucking was what harems were for, our housekeepers came in. This sort of instantaneous appearance had happened so often that I had come to expect it.
“Okay, Barb. Why did the two of you decide to ‘man’ this installation entirely with women?”
“But Tom, we made no such decision!”
“Well, somebody sure as hell did!” Ian said, “There isn’t one single male human being out there. Are you claiming that not one single qualified man applied for a job here?”
“No sir, many qualified men applied for work here.”
“Then why in hell didn’t any of them get hired?”
“Because in all cases, women outbid them for the jobs available, sir.”
I said, “Hold it. What do you mean, ‘bid for the jobs’? Just how do you go about filling a working position around here?”
“When a position becomes open, the prospective employer posts a notice at the Employment Office, describing the job, the maximum salary that might be paid, and the qualifications necessary to fill it. The Employment Office screens job applicants, and decides who is qualified for what. Job applicants read these postings, offer to fill those that they are qualified for, and bid a minimum salary that they would be willing to work for. In our case, all of the women who applied were willing to work for less than the equally qualified men were.”
“That seems like a reasonable enough system, but why were the women willing to work so much cheaper than the men?”
“A person expects many forms of remuneration from their job. Besides money, one wants a chance for personal growth and advancement, a pleasant working environment, interesting, challenging work, and . . . other things.”
“Other things?” I asked.
“Tom, she’s saying that the women were willing to work cheap because by working here, they’ll get a chance to meet us,” Ian said. “Those who didn’t get jobs at our palaces figured that this was their next best shot.”
“The mind boggles. Barb, how much are the girls out there working for? For that matter, what do the women at the palaces make? How much are you, yourself, paid?”
“Minimum wage, Tom. We’re all earning the least that the regulations permit.”
“Uh huh. And how does this minimum wage compare with the usual salary paid to an experienced skilled tradesman or a good engineer?”
“Usually, such people would make about six times minimum page.”
“And all of these women are willing to work for starvation wages, just to get a chance to meet Ian and me?”
“Yes, Tom. Although no one is starving, of course. All wages include food, housing, and medical insurance.”
Ian said, “Barb, I want you and Ming Po to go out and wait for a while. Tom and I need to talk.”
When they were gone, Ian continued, “Tom, there are a lot of things that I don’t like about all this. One of them is that I don’t like wearing solid gold buttons on my silk shirt while I’m paying people scab wages.”
“Agreed. As of now, everybody who works for us gets paid as much as they would earn if we weren’t here.”
“No way. We’ve got to make it retroactive to the date of hiring. And all of Hasenpfeffer’s women have to be included in the deal.”
“Seconded and so moved. Next, what do we do about the hundred or so women out there? If we replace them with men, what do we do with them? Do we fire them because they’re women?”
“Tom, how could we do that and still be honorable men? No, we have to keep those women who have already been hired, and try to treat them just like men.”
“But they don’t want to be treated like men. They offered to work for nearly nothing because they expected us to treat them like women! Are you going to decline the services of the next attractive woman who works her way into your bed? Could any normal man turn down that many decent, gorgeous women? I mean, there are these biological imperatives that a man doesn’t have all that much to say about!”
“And there are some religious reasons for doing the same thing. God’s very first commandment was for us to be fruitful, to divide and multiply. But what I meant was that in the work situation, we should try to be as fair as possible, and keep our private, sexual lives separate from our working lives.”
“Good luck. I’ll tell you what I’m minded to do. Aside from Barb, I’ve followed Hasenpfeffer’s original suggestion, and put all the girls at my place on a schedule. They each have their occasional night in bed with me, and if it happens that they get laid before then, they forfeit their next turn, until all the others have caught up.”
“Yeah. I’ve done about the same, Tom.”
“So, I’m going to tell Barb to put all the women who work for me on the same schedule. Those who want to, that is. If the girls at the palace don’t like it, well, they can blame the whole thing on Barb.”
“Okay. Then I’ll do the same. But it’s not going to be easy, treating the girl you slept with last night like she’s just another worker.”
“It’s a rough life, Ian, but England expects every man to do his duty.”
“I’ve got a better idea. How about if the girls who work here for you belong to my harem, and your new harem girls all work for me? After that, we try not to mess around with each other’s girls, and pillow talk about work isn’t allowed.”