Unions+and+Unemployment

Unions
In 1930, only 3.4 million people belonged to unions. This number is down 5 million since 1920. The Wagner Act, or National Labor Relations Act, was passed in 1935. This protected workers' rights to be a member of a union. In 1937, auto workers had a successful strike and because of this, GM now recognized the United Automobile Workers. With this strike, union membership rose rapidly. Now, the National Labor Relations Board was set up. The Board was able to forbid unfair labor practices by employers ("Digital History").

Strikes were now imminent. In 1934, 1.5 million workers went on strike. The biggest strike the country had ever seen was posed by 500,000 textile workers in 20 different states. The state of Massachusetts had 110,000 strikers and Georgia had 60,000. All of these workers had something in common. Some wanted better wages, but many just wanted union recognition ("Digital History").



Due to the mass number of strikes at the time, the federal government was forced to mediate arguments between labor and management. In the mid-1930s there was a major dispute within labor's ranks. The American Federation of Labor (AFL), the main union at the moment, only had "craft unions organized by occupation," or skilled workers. Therefore, the Committee of Industrial Organization (CIO) was formed to organize the unskilled workers of the mass production industry. By the end of 1937, the CIO had gained more members than the AFL. The CIO had 3.7 million members while the AFL was at a membership of 3.4 million ("Digital History").

** Unemployment **
Many groups and programs were established to try and end unemployment. However, some were more successful than others. The Public Works Administration (PWA) was the first major program to attack unemployment. It provided people with money to spend on industrial products. For example, the PWA spent $6 million in six years on projects like dams, sewer systems, and ports. The head of the program, Harold Ickes, feared scandal within the group; therefore, the PWA did not spend enough money to significantly reduce unemployment ("Digital History").

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was the New Deal's most famous jobs program. In mid-1933, around 300,000 unemployed men between the ages of 18 and 25 were hired to work in national parks and forests. Workers for the CCC planted saplings, built fire towers, restocked depleted streams, and restored historic battlefields for $30 a month. They lived in wilderness camps and the money the earned they sent home to their families. By the ending of the program in 1942, 2.5 million men had participated in "Roosevelt's 'Tree Army.'" Yet again, this program failed to seriously decline the unemployment rate. The reasons for this were plenty. For one, women were not offered jobs, blacks were given harsh quotas, and the number of young people offered work was slim ("Digital History").

One program that started out amazingly well was the Civil Works Administration (CWA). It had 2.6 million people working in the first month of operation. Two months in and four million were building 250,000 miles of road, 40,000 schools, 150,000 privies, and 3,700 playgrounds. However, Roosevelt ended the CWA because he "did not want to run a budget deficit or to create a permanent dependent class" ("Digital History").

Finally, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created by Congress in 1935. This program employed 3.5 million workers at "security wage," which is twice the level of welfare payments but severely lower than union standards. In its first five years, the WPA constructed and improved 2,500 hospitals, 5,900 schools, 1,000 airport fields, and 13,000 playgrounds. $11 billion was put into the economy by 1941 due to the WPA. About 5% of the WPA's spending went to the arts because "cultural programs" provided work for thousands more. A 1939 Gallup poll stated that, according to the people, the best and worst thing of the New Deal was the WPA. At its best, the WPA spent about $2.2 billion a year ("Digital History").