tables and stools are made for hospitals; desks and cabinets for officers, etc. In addition, sets of more sophisticated furniture are produced for the German officials in the government.
As pointed out, the Jewish manufacturer, despite having retained some independence, was primarily an outworker. We will demonstrate at this point that such independence was expressed in the following way:
1 ) a craftsman received money from his outwork employer, which the latter paid in advance for delivery but not for the raw and auxiliary materials, which is a fundamental feature of outwork business;
2) even if the carpenter received raw materials, they were treated as cash, deducted later from the total order value.
Regardless of the network of intermediaries through whom orders reached the carpenter, the latter was primarily interested in labour. In this field, one has to suppose that such items—depending on the type of work, and therefore whether a product was mass produced or more sophisticated—ranged from 30–50 % of the total value of orders. The corresponding amount came directly to the ghetto as the equivalent of the labour.
Large-scale deliveries in the field of carpentry were linked to deliveries of lathe articles, such as tent poles, flag poles, etc.; as well as the production of brush boards.
How many workers were employed in carpentry?
[16] Their number is difficult to establish because in addition to carpenters from Warsaw, many refugees and unprofessional workers took up carpentry as a result of the lack of employment in other industries.
Due to changes in the cost of living, both workers’ wages and other costs fluctuated, among which the most important were rental fees for equipment in mechanical carpentry workshops:
in autumn 1940 one hour of a machine’s work in a carpentry workshop cost 6 zlotys;
in spring 1941 —8 zlotys;
in autumn 1941 —15 zlotys.
With regard to workers’ wages, it should be noted in advance that a carpentry worker actually was in a relatively better position than an independent master craftsman. The latter was in fact entirely reliant on the outsourced employer, or on the resource market, and his earnings were affected by this dependence. A worker, on the other hand, received a fixed rate and was
