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88
OUTWORKERS.
Part VI. of the Factory and Workshop Act, 1901, which deals with Outworkers
is headed "Home Work," and its provisions mainly refer to dwellinghouses
in which work is carried on.
This would seem to imply that an Outworker is necessarily a Homeworker,
but in the City this is not the case; the large majority of City Outworkers
carry on work in premises apart from their homes, and employ
workers other than members of their own families. They are in fact
occupiers of ordinary workshops or factories, and their premises are inspected
in the ordinary routine. In visiting the addresses sent in by employers,
several workshops, hitherto unknown, and in which the prescribed Abstract
of the Factory Act was not affixed, were discovered, and have been
accordingly notified to His Majesty's Inspectors of Factories.
The small proportion of Outworkers who are Homeworkers fall into
three classes:—
(1) Those working at home and employing workers other than members
of their own families.
In this case the premises are Workshops.
(2) Those working at home and employing only members of the family.
These premises are Domestic Workshops.
(3) Those working at home and employing only members of the family,
but whose labour is exercised at irregular intervals, and does not
furnish the whole or principal means of living to the family.
These are exempt from the provisions of the Factory and
Workshop Act, 1901, with the exception of:—
Section 108, which prohibits work being carried on in
unwholesome premises;
Section 109, which prohibits the making of wearing apparel
where there is scarlet fever or small-pox;
Section 110, which prohibits work being given out to any
person working or living in a house any inmate of which is
suffering from a notifiable infectious disease.
No name is given to this class of Outworker in the Factory
and Workshop Act, 1901, but they may for convenience of
reference be designated "Occasional Workers."