Colleagues & Canteens
Philippa Dolan: What would you do in your lunch hour?
Mrs Kelly: Well we'd take lunch with us you see. Well we had a mess room it's called and we used to go down there. Now if we didn't have a machine, we'd be called a labourer for the day and we'd go down this mess room and clean that mess room like, because someone working the afternoons, they'd go down to have their meals with a table and chairs and a nice fire, so we'd be down there.
Philippa Dolan: Would you get paid less for that?
Mrs Kelly: Oh no, the same money as if I was working in the...
Philippa Dolan: So they didn't employ girls especially to do the cleaning?
Mrs Kelly: No, no it was whoever, which one of us without a day's today, we'd go down the mess room and clean that Mess room. It was nice and clean mind, everything clean with everybody.
Philippa Dolan: But you wouldn't have enough time off in the lunch hour to go for a walk or go shopping?
Mrs Kelly: No we'd all sit and chat you know.
Bleddyn Penny: What did you like most about working at the steelworks?
Francis Needs: Well it was the lads I worked with I suppose. It was a great bunch of fellas you know, really good guys who would do anything for you. I mean if I needed something welded or electric - you know the electrcians, they were great guys, the fitters...they were all smashing blokes. And the riggers, the riggers themselves - when I went there as a young lad, they were all, a real tough bunch - they were all, sort of , ex seamen. Alec Doleague (sic) and Sammy Miller - they were a smashing bunch of blokes - tough as nails but marvellous guys. I loved working there with them.
Bleddyn Penny: Did you have much opportunity to have fun at work then?
Francis Needs: Yeh we did. In the early days we did. We could have a laugh - it was accepted to have a laugh. It was great - I enjoyed working there. But when I came to finish, ah it, it altered a lot. I mean if you were smiling then you weren't taking your job serious. It was that bad. Nobody wanted to be there anymore.
