The Baby Boomer Generation Read Free Page B

on and were living in the past. At the same time, it was difficult for fresh blood to break through the glass ceiling put in place by the ‘old boys’ brigade and any new ideas put forward to change business practices were frowned upon.
    It was a hard task for anyone from a working-class background to become a senior manager, and it was almost impossible for women. Many employers shied away from employing anyone who showed signs of having ambition. They tended to look no further than covering an immediate requirement for someone to perform a single task, like an office worker who could add up a row of figures or a girl who could type a letter. A supervisor would be used to keep an eye on workers and make sure they didn’t skive off or pinch anything, rather than devise ways to improve efficiency. A factory worker with initiative was seen as a hindrance rather than an asset; the boss just wanted someone who could operate a lever 1000 times a day. There were also no rules about equality in the workplace. It was quite legal for employers to specify exactly what type of person they were looking for when placing job adverts, including age, gender, colour, religion, height, weight or whatever. And, once employed, there was nothing to protect employees from bad employers other than the limited protection offered by the trade unions, which usually meant the threat of strike action. There were no health and safety rules and no legal requirement for employers to treat workers with respect or to pay them a reasonable wage. Membership of trade unions was an established part of working life in Britain and as our businesses struggled to compete in the post-war world, the trade unions became more aggressive and powerful. There was an invisible barrier between workers and management and there were no common objectives. Industrial workers felt they were hard done-by, often working in dangerous and generally bad conditions, poorly paid and with no job security.
    In the 1940s city, the early morning street scene was of men and women trudging to work with smoke drifting from dog-ends hidden beneath hundreds of anonymous flat caps and scarves. Others on bicycles expertly weaved their way through the throng, many gripping roll-ups between their teeth and puffing away as they went. The rush to work was not spurred on by enthusiasm but the need to clock in on time. Work was a necessary chore and for most there was no expectation of job satisfaction at the end of each day and nothing better to look forward to at work the next day. Many had to endure awful working conditions; miners suffered dangerous, dark, dirty and cramp conditions underground, while factory workers risked life and limb on each shift by manually operating unguarded machines for long hours in overcrowded, noisy and dirty factories. A cushy office job wasn’t the perfect alternative, as office workers were closely supervised and often worked in cramped and untidy conditions, forced to breathe air that was usually filled with cigarette smoke. Accidents were an everyday occurrence in the 1940s workplace, especially for the industrial workers.
    The homes that many of us early baby boomers were born into in the late 1940s were very simple in comparison to today. Apart from the noticeable absence of any labour-saving machines and electronic devices, there were only a small number of people with television sets; only about 400 wealthy households in and around London had one. At the time, the service from the Alexandra Palace transmitter in North London only covered a radius of 40 to 100 miles on a good day, and even the wealthy families who had bought a television when transmissions first began in 1936 had not been able to switch them on since war broke out in 1939 because the transmitter was shut down and the BBC’s television service only resumed in 1946. The service was extended to cover the Midlands in 1949 but the rest of the country had to wait a few more years. It