VN042 Vera Jones, Courtaulds, Flint

Vera worked at Courtaulds straight from school,starting in 1941. "I went by myself for a job, and they interviewed you. You just went there for a job. There was nothing else I wanted to do. I probably didn’t think I’d got the capabilities to do anything else. Then you go to see the nurse and she would look in your hair for nits. And then a chat and they would tell you to start. And then when I started, my mother used to take me to the bus in the mornings because it was dark and I was only a little fourteen year old. So she would take me to the bus for a while, until I got in with some other people and then I could go to the bus with them. And we had to wear black clothing. Our dresses which we made for our selves or somebody made for us, out of blackout curtains. We had to wear black, so that it would show all the threads and that on us." Vera went from the 'cakewrapping' into the office, when the factory asked her to do the book keeping. But, as the girls on the factory floor got more money than she did by earning a bonus, she went back into the production part, where she did the 'coning'. She was there until she got married in 1950 and left Courtaulds afterwards to have a baby. She returned to work afterwards and went into local government, doing rent collecting and debt recovery, where she stayed until she retired at the age of 66.