I saw the jobs advertised on the walls of the streets in the factory areas. In those days, the early 1960s, the factories were busy and workers helped each other. The pay was very low when I started: $3.50 to iron one dozen pyjama tops (factories paid piecemeal rates per dozen pieces ironed). Many of the women who had done it a long time managed three to four dozen an hour.
How much each we earned depended entirely on speed and quality of work. All I managed at first was a dozen or so pieces an hour, because I was scared of making mistakes and having money docked from my wages. Once I got used to it, I managed to make as much as $100 a day.
I spent almost all of my working life ironing in three factories in Cheung Sha Wan, Castle Peak Road and Kwai Chung. They were all clothing factories. I ironed shirts, pants, jeans - mostly men's clothing. Soon after I started, ironers left en masse because of the low rates, and the payment then went up to $5.50 per dozen. It was possible to complete 10 dozen a day. I managed to get up to the top rate of $16 per dozen, but at that rate there was a limit of four dozen per day.
The degree of difficulty was dependent on the materials the garments were made from. Flannels were the easiest to iron and I was given these first. From there I progressed to shirts. Then, of course, there was sizing. Even with ironing, everything was divided into sizes.The first factory I approached needed machinists and I tried my hand at that. I found jeans very hard to do. They were heavy and required constant changing of needles. Every time you went from one type of fabric to another, you had to change needles. It was exacting work and everything you did was examined for flaws before you got your money.
The pay was better for ironing work, so I tried that, even though I found the work very difficult in the beginning, when I hurt everywhere, all the way down to my feet. My legs ached constantly from standing for so many hours. The irons weighed a good two to three kilos and required strength to operate. There were times when I went home feeling like every muscle was screaming, but I had to ignore it because there was housework to be done and a family waiting to be fed.
All the money I earned was for the household. It took the combined incomes of both my husband and myself to make ends meet. Jobs were hard to find for someone like me, who had less than six years of schooling.