Labor During the New Deal

1
Labor During the New Deal
2
Unemployment Relief

• Upon taking the oath of office, Franklin
  Roosevelt was faced with the mounting challenge
  of unemployment.
• At the beginning of 1933, over 12 million
  Americans lacked jobs.
• Unemployment relief became a vital part of New
  Deal legislation.

3
National Industrial Recovery Act

• The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of
  June 16, 1933 was a set of United States federal
  laws and codes that authorized the President to
• regulate businesses in the interests of
  promoting "fair" competition
• supporting prices and wages
• creating jobs for unemployed workers
• stimulating the United States economy to recover
  from the Great Depression
• The law created a National Recovery
  Administration (NRA), an executive agency
  exercising powers which Congress had delegated to
  it, to promote compliance on the part of
  corporations.
• Firms which voluntarily complied could display
  the Blue Eagle.

4
Public Works Administration

• The Public Works Administration of 1933 was a
  part of the first New Deal
• It was an agency that made contracts with private
  firms for construction of public works.
• Created by the National Industrial Recovery Act
• Allotted 3.3 billion dollars to be spent on the
  construction of public works as a means of
• providing employment
• stabilizing purchasing power
• improving public welfare
• contributing to a revival of American industry.

5
"The Search for Social Justice"

• Father Charles Coughlin was politically radical,
  a passionate democrat, but also a bigot who
  freely vented angry, irrational charges and
  assertions.
• A Catholic priest, he broadcast weekly radio
  sermons that by 1930 drew as many as forty-five
  million listeners.
• By the mid-1930s, his talks took on a nasty edge
  as he combined harsh attacks on Roosevelt as the
  tool of international Jewish bankers with praise
  for the fascist leaders Benito Mussolini and
  Adolph Hitler.
• He began as an early Roosevelt supporter, coining
  a famous expression, that the nation's choice was
  between "Roosevelt or ruin."
• Later in the 1930s he turned against FDR and
  became one of the president's harshest critics.
• His program of "social justice" was a very
  radical challenge to unbridled capitalism and to
  many of the political institutions of his day.

6
American Federation of Labor

• Founded in 1886, the American Federation of Labor
  was, for the first half of the 20th century, the
  largest union grouping operation in the United
  States.

7
National Labor Relations Act

• Enacted into law on July 5, 1935, the National
  Labor Relations or Wagner Act was the single most
  important piece of labor legislation in the
  United States during the 20th century.
• The act was designed to remove management
  interference in unions and permit free
  collective bargaining.
• Established a federal agency, the National Labor
  Relations Board, with the power to investigate
  and decide unfair labor practice charges and to
  conduct elections in which workers were given the
  opportunity to decide whether they wanted to be
  represented by a union.
• The NLRB was given more extensive powers than the
  much weaker organization of the same name
  established under the National Industrial
  Recovery Act, which the United States Supreme
  Court had declared to be unconstitutional

8
Huey Long

• During his three brief years in the U.S. Senate,
  Huey Long became one of the most flamboyant and
  provocative Senators in the nation's history.
• He earned the enmity of his fellow Senators due
  to his frequent use of the filibuster to make
  some "point of principle" about which he was
  especially passionate.
• He used the floor of the Senate to the
  fullest--taking the Senate floor to place in the
  official record his arguments for his Share The
  Wealth program, and to proselytize for his
  general world-view.

9
John L. Lewis

• John L. Lewis was a pivotal figure in American
  labor politics.
• Driving force behind the founding of the Congress
  of Industrial Organizations, which helped
  organize millions of industrial workers in the
  1930s.
• He worked to organize the country's industrial
  workers through the Congress of Industrial
  Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s.
• Lewis and the UMW were major backers of
  Roosevelt's reelection in 1936.
• When the AFL balked at organizing unskilled
  workers, Lewis withdrew his unions and formed a
  new organization, the CIO.
• By 1937-40 the CIO was spending as much time
  fighting the AFL as organizing, with the result
  that union political power was divided against
  itself.

10
Mayor Frank "Boss" Hague

• In 1937, Jersey City, New Jersey Mayor Frank
  "Boss" Hague used a city ordinance to prevent
  labor meetings in public places and stop the
  distribution of literature pertaining to the
  cause of the CIO.
• Hague used the machinery of the city to thwart
  the CIOs meetings and efforts to secure workers
  rights.
• The CIO responded by bringing a suit against
  Hague.
• In 1939, the district and circuit courts ruled in
  favor of the CIO.
• Hague appealed to the Supreme Court which ruled
  against him and held that Hague's ban on
  political meetings violated the First Amendment
  right to freedom of assembly.

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• Multimedia Citations
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