Cape Breton's Magazine

You know, we were close together. Like, I would sit here, and right there, right next to me--I could reach over and touch the next person. So if they were dirty or had lice, I had to catch it. And I was passing, you know, my tuner over to her, and she was passing things back to me. Like, it was just a touch communication. (What did the plant look like to you?) Oh, it was just gigantic. It was big, very big. When you went in, it was all opened. All you could see were lines--you know, they called them "lines." (What's a line?) There was a belt running. And then there'd be like a little desk every so many feet. Now at the first of a line, the girls worked, sitting right like this. (As you would nor? mally sit at a table.) And then they had a long shelf table here. And they'd put a part on their tuner, and here was the belt, and they'd put it up on the belt, and do the next one. And the belt kept going. And then we (the testers) sat sideways. And we had a table, with our machines on the table. Because we tested the tuners. We tuned them in, for their stations. (You called them lines, but what were they really?) They were just--there'd be like a line, and all chairs, and then there'd be this thing that just--belt--it just kept going around and around. (The belt) went from one length to the other length of the building, pretty well. There'd be about 25 to 30 girls on each line. (Probably how many lines, do you think?) Oh God, we had--there were 8 regular lines. And then the ones that did Philco and that, there were about 5 of them. And then down back here we had 3 more. That's 16. And in this section was the key line. (What's a key line?) It made--you know when you get in your car and you push in your buttons--you're pushing in the keys. Those things you're pushing were made on the key line--we called them the keys. We were making all car radios--tuners-- that's what we called them. And what I did was, I tested the tuner. I put it on this machine, and I had this little win? dow. And there was this little dot, and this line would go up like this. Then there was a line across. I had to get the frequency in. I had to tune in the chan? nels, that's what I did. I would push one of the keys in. And then I had these little cores, they were called. And I used a screwdriver, and I turned them un? til that dot hit the top. When it hit the top, I would then press the key in and lock it, and glue it, so that it couldn't come out. And therefore when you turn on your radio and you press CJCB, you've got it. I locked it in to each channel. We did AM and FM. I used to check the tuners, in the end, before it closed. I got kind of promoted, I guess, to Q.C. (Quality Control). That was the job everybody wanted. (What does Q.C. mean?) Every box of tuners that they finished, I had to take 3 out of it. And I had to put it on this machine and I had to check it, to make sure they were good. If they weren't good, I rejected that box. And that whole box had to go back and be redone. (This was the kind of a job people would like to have had?) It was the eas? iest job you could get! You had to wait until they finished a whole case. And then all you had to do was check 3 out of the whole case. So, I mean, it was a cu? shiony job. You got 10 cents an hour more for it, besides. And I just got that job 7 or 8 months before we closed up. CONTINUED NEXT PAGE ATLANTIC FISHERIES A PROMISING FUTURE Scientific Excellence Resource Protection & Conservation Benefits for Canadians ! ! ' Canada