CHARNWOOD ELASTICS - THE FIRST 6 MONTHS

In the 2 years since leaving school I had spent a year unemployed, and the rest of the time doing part time work and temporary work placements. After the latest job fell through Mat Callaghan got me a job at his place. He had got people jobs at Charnwood elastics before and they had all let him down. So after promising him I would be serious about the job, I turned up and was finally in full time employment.

Initially i was very reluctant to take the job, the factory was one of them places with a high turnover of staff, everyone knew someone who worked or had previously worked there. It had a reputation for being the kind of place where "any idiot" could get a job. For someone who 3 years earlier was doing A-Level maths and computing it was a long way down the ladder from where I was expected to work. But ultimately I had to start somewhere.........

Like Matthew I was in the dye house where I remained for the whole time I was employed by them. It was very hot (even in winter) steamy and had a few strange smells. I was put on the simple but slightly messy job of dehanking for the first couple of weeks. Then I was put on the padder for about a month, which finishes and drys the elastic, I didn’t like this machine as it was a bit old and antiquated.

Everything we did was recorded in a logbook, number of hanks dehanked, meters of elastic finished etc. So while the management wasn’t directly standing over us I was always conscious of trying to get good production figures and trying to make a good impression. At the time it seemed to be a good idea but years later I discovered that it was the wrong strategy.  

I settled into the job and the routine of morning 6-2 and afternoon 2-10 shift work. I earned between 110 and 120 pounds a week (after deductions) this was considered by most people at the time to be a poor wage. However from my perspective I was on good money, 18 months earlier I was earning 50 pounds a week as a part time sales assistant and 18 months before that I had just 7 pounds a week from a paper round.

Despite my new found wealth my lifestyle didn’t change at all, most 20 year old males in that situation would have done their driving test and got a car. I wasn’t remotely interested in that, in fact my spendings hardly changed at all. My social life was a bit stagnant at the time to say the least so the excess money just built up in the bank.

My unusual attitude to money did affect my attitude to work, on one hand I wanted to do well as explained above but that was just to be better at the job I was doing. However I showed almost no interested in getting promoted. The factory had about 5 levels of pay depending on what machines you could run. Many people said things along the lines of “you should be learning colours as it’s more money”. I didn’t see the point as I was saving loads of money anyway and some of the work could be fairly stressful as it was. I was only ever promoted when other people left and even then it was very reluctantly.

I was moved up to the first continuous dye range machine after a few months, this involved the raw elastic going through a dye bath, a steamer, wash tanks, a finish bath and finally being dried on rollers. The above picture is similar to what I ran for the remaining six and a half years at the place. It could be a very stressful job at times, if the elastic snapped and wrapped up in the steamer you had to stick your head in a 110 degree C steamer and cut it out then thread it back up again. I have to admit I didn’t like this long before I even ran the machine.

The job seemed to alternate between long stretches of boredom when everything was running ok and an absolute nightmare. However it was safe to say that I had settled in, I was only running the whites machine and was spared from another quick promotion and a steep learning curve due to the fact the next machine was being sold and replaced by a modern one. So it was a waste of time teaching me how to use that.

After about six months I was called up to the office and given the first pay rise and was told by the dyehouse manager that they were pleased by my progress.