Comments??

Another angle on our heroine: **LINK**

https://goo.gl/images/d1FbS9

Photograper: Carl Court ... [search for him if you've not seen his other work]

She looks convincing as a 'real' worker to me.

MichaelG.

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Edit: Sorry, that short link doesn't work properly

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 08/02/2018 22:20:05

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 08/02/2018 22:28:58

With Getty, you pays your money to use their image and they don't seem to care if you credit them or not. They supply half the images you see in many magazines and advertising, billboards, packaging etc etc worldwide and not often do you see a credit.

The last image you posted certainly looks more like a real worker shot. Well done tracking that lot down.

Edited By Hopper on 08/02/2018 23:33:50

I served my time as a plater/welder in the early 80’s, worked in heavy industry for 10 yrs after i came out of my time, at several establishments including, boiler makers, oil industry fabricators and structural steel manufacturers. Non of the factories i worked in looked as posh as the one in the photo, they were all cold, noisy, dark, smelly and hazardous............PPE was an uncoined phrase, most of the old hands were either deaf, half blind, had a bad back, a bad chest, a missing digit, or all the above......I know of at least 3 blokes that were injured so bad they would never work again, and witnessed several near misses that could have resulted in loss of life........The safety elves are definitely a good thing, but i reckon it’s gone too far the other way now, it’s a wonder we ever leave the house.

Edited By Alan Waddington 2 on 08/02/2018 23:36:45

I saw massive changes in the car industry in the 44 years I worked in it. It was noisy and filthy in 1972 but things got better with every model. When I retired it was pretty clean and quiet, a massive transformation much of which was enabled by improvements in technology. What never changed was the relentless speed of mass production, things are quite busy when you make a car every minute on a single build line.

Mike

No reason to doubt that this lady is a real worker; none of the chaps doing more obvious production line work in the series of photos look like models!

Of course the photos are 'posed' - they were taken by a professional photographer and intended to appeal to paying customers.

I'm intrigued by what the lady is doing. I like Juddy's suggestion that the hefty orange wall-mounted device on the right is a dynamometer, or possibly an electric motor that spins an unfueled engine as part of final testing. Her job is to align the engine with the test rig; to connect the electronic instrumentation; do the test; and then move the engine to the next stage. The second photo supports the idea that the orange device is a dynamometer. In the first photo there's no obvious way of removing exhaust. In the second photo the lady could be connecting the engine to an exhaust analyser.

Dave

The first picture seems pretty certainly posed. If the engine was being rigged for test, or derigged post test, some tooling would be evident, (air tools suspended from a balancer, or electric screwdrivers /' wrenches). Possibly that shot only showed a unit being moved from place to place.

With no rotating equipment near by the long hair is probably acceptable. The rest of the PPE placxes the shot in a modern factory environment.

My conclusion is that there are a series of publicity shots purporting to show how things are made, (without the real in depth knowledge of what IS happening).

An engine in a cold chamber at -15 C does not look cold, (the low temperature removed any moisture a long time ago) So you throw buckets of soapy water over it, so that the ice and icicles LOOK cold. The folk around it, wearing thick gloves, hats, clothing are far more believable.

Howard

It may have been posed like you said, but I have no reason in my personal experience to doubt that she is a real worker, I've worked with a few older and less photogenic honest ladies on the production line.

(Ironically the factory had more women working there years ago than now, when the work was needed post-war. but there were also a lot more men too, company went into administration temporarily and downsized from a workforce of 50-60 to around 20 in my time) 

It's good PR for them. To be fair they haven't over done it, if we can believe they really work there. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 09/02/2018 16:37:09

In a similar vein there was this on the BBC website the other day

Eight things more likely to kill you in 1970s Britain than today

The workplace being one of them.

We seem to be building a generation who are blameless of anything, whatever happens it must be someone else's fault. People should man up and take responsibility for their own stupidity.

Mike