VN028 Vicky Perfect, Courtaulds, Flint

Vicky worked in Courtaulds from the age of 15, for 11 years. She would have liked to have stayed on at school and gone to college but her mother expected her to go out and work. She'd already been working in a cafe in Rhyl from the age of 13. She began factory work in Mayfair, which made duffle coats and was located on the top floor of Courtaulds but independent of it. It closed and was taken over by Courtaulds and the small workforce came too. Vicky was initally on the 'coning' and was later a union rep. She moved onto the staff at the age of 20, to the work study department. She can't remember what she earned when she was on the factory floor but in the work study department her wages were £23, in cash, and she gave the packet unopened to her mother, who would keep the £20 and give her £3, out of which she had to buy all her own clothes from her mother's catalogue. She still worked in the café at the weekends and bank holidays and the two week factory shutdown and she had to give this wage to her mother too, unopened. She liked working on the staff and did this job until she left to have her children in 1976.