Work Life “I was the first Indian lady to work at Curzonia, they asked me to bring four or five of my friends because we work hard. They didn’t speak English so I used to interpret for them.” – Nalini Desai “I was working two jobs together really, looking after my kids and doing piece work at home. I didn’t mind, I worked 7 days a week but I earned good money.” – Harsa Kalyan As the Asian communities became more prosperous they started to invest in factories of their own. In this community environment, work conditions could be easier, with women undertaking outsource work if they had small children at home. It was often the case that small children were allowed into the factories after school, during holidays and if there were child care issues.
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“They (factory owner) used to let my daughter come to the factory, she used to play with toys next to my machine. She was three years old.” – Bhanuben Mistry Sometimes though this situation was also open to exploitation with women being at home with small children or dependent relatives they would take any work offered and often worked 60 hours for as little as £10 (Leicester Mercury Feb 16th 1984). Interestingly, ‘By 1990 out of 215 businesses owned by Asian or AfricanCaribbean people, 77 were in the knitting industry’ (Knitting Togetherthe Heritage of the East Midlands Knitting Industry). Although the smaller factories prospered, the larger ones did not. By the early 1980s a decline in manufacturing industries saw much of their trade go to factories abroad, where labour and materials were cheap.
“We used to earn £300 per week doing piece work, in China they will work for £20 a week, they can’t pay us less, because we had mortgages and bills to pay, so we were made redundant and the factories closed down.” – Nalini Desai “My boss was a white man, but he liked the Indian lady workers best because we worked so hard. The white ladies didn’t like us much.” – Sushila Sharma