Module Seven - Increased Rights for Labor and The Effect of New Deal on U.S. Society and Government

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If this new law, the NLRA was about employee rights, what kind of rights do you think it was giving them?

Increased Rights for Labor

One of the increased rights labor got.
Useful in getting what they wanted?

Workers had been demanding better treatment for some time.  If you recall, their main concerns were that they wanted

• Higher pay
• Shorter hours, and
• Safer working conditions.

The problem was that the factory owners would not bargain with the workers.  

These guys are bargaining over money.
Just like workers and factory owners.

Why do they eventually have to compromise?

Part of The New Deal was a plan called The National Labor Relations Act that would protect the rights of workers to try to get better conditions. It became law in 1935.

This images shows workers happy because they now have more rights after the NLRA started

The National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act was made in 1935 and did the following:

1. protected the rights of most workers in non-government jobs  to organize labor unions,

2. required business owners to engage in cooperative  bargaining with the workers unions, and

3. allowed workers to take part in strikes and other actions  in support of their demands.

The Wagner Act started 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.

Workers Could Now Join Unions

All of these factory workers have joined the same labor union. Why did the artist show their raised fists emerging as one giant fist? What was the point?

President Roosevelt (FDR) and the NLRA

Notice the artist dressed FDR - The President ( man standing with his hand on the shoulder of the worker sitting) as a worker himself.  
Why?
Do you think that is an image of something that really happened, or is it symbolic, standing for some other idea?

Does this mean FDR was seen as a friend of … Which Side? … factory owners or workers???

NLRA in Action

The expansion of the role of the federal government in people's daily lives

See all the people reaching out to and getting help from the man on the right, President Roosevelt?

What did he represent?

The goal of The New Deal that President Roosevelt and his helpers designed was to help people in the United States. The goals were to provide

*Relief,

*Recovery, and

*Reform.  

These programs were necessary, because so many people were suffering due to no job, no place to live and no food to eat.  

It was necessary for government to get involved MORE in people’s daily lives than they had been before.  

Government had never before been involved in helping people like the Social Security program did:

*money to the elderly (old),

* money to hurt workers,

* money to the unemployed, and

* money to widows and orphans.

The government had never directly paid to put this many people to work before.

These were examples of the federal government being involved in people’s daily lives like they never had been before.

One way you can see that the Federal government was more involved in the lives of people was to look at how much money they spent.

Look at this graph of how much money the federal government did spend. What does it show you happened with spending during the New Deal?

See how at the beginning of the graph, in the years after 1930 during the New Deal, how the government started spending (red line) more than they were getting from taxes (blue line). Is it a good idea to spend more than you actually have???

(The BIG jump in the 1940s was because of something VERY expensive, in many ways, in which we would be involved.)

All of the job programs run by the WPA, NYA, and CCC were something that was new. Never before had the Federal government been involved in providing jobs for the unemployed.  

And then there were the farmers. They had NEVER before been paid to NOT do their jobs, which was to grow crops (corn, wheat), milk cows, and raise cattle for meat.  

One particular farmer, Gordon Stevens (Grampa) of Wysox, Pennsylvania really did not like it. He said "I don't like the government trying to tell me how to run this farm. We've been doing  it for hundreds of years and don't need them telling  us what to do."

The Stevens farm in northern Pennsylvania along the Susquehanna River

As you can see, the Federal (National) government was getting involved in people’s lives in ways they never had before.  

An increased expectation that the government would provide services

In the minds of some people this help form the Federal government had a negative effect. They began to expect the Federal government to provide help and things for them all the time. This includes help finding jobs and paying for food.  With the government paying for so many people to do so many things folks began to depend on that help just to survive.  

The lady is holding a credit card (how you borrow money) that is a symbol of U.S. Government spending on things. She has stuff she wants, and is STILL calling for more. Some say one effect of the New Deal was that people started to DEPEND on government spending.

Almost every New Deal program went against the basic idea of laissez faire, which as you remember from our earlier units, meant that the government would NOT get involved in business.  People came to expect that the government would solve their problems.  

Many social reforms (changes) such as Social Security were obviously needed. Few people will deny that greatly required relief programs were needed for those in need. However, many in the nations came to rely on them.  AND we were spending more to do all of this than we had. We, as a nation were borrowing. A LOT.