Word: unionism
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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When Congress set up WPA four years ago, friends of union labor saw to it that union hourly wage scales, as prevailing in different sections of the U. S., were provided for skilled workmen. Thus, if union carpenters were getting $1.75 an hour in private employment, carpenters working for WPA got $1.75. Result: to earn the maximum monthly wage of $92.89 allotted to them, they need work only 53 hours a month. The unions' interest in thus preventing Unemployment from breaking the market for their labor was only natural. But WPA's prevailing-wage provision had other effects...
Obviously that meant more hours of work for the same pay, and pay-per-hour far below "prevailing" (union) rates for skilled labor. Administrator Harrington argued this would be "an important factor in determining need." WPA jobs, calling for 130 hours of work per month, would become less popular. Incentive to get private employment, and hold it, would be enhanced...
Last week, first week of the new law's operation, union labor startled President, Administrator, Congress and taxpayers by a nationwide performance daring and unprecedented; a strike against a law of the land...
...York City, in Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, WPAsters who belonged to unions-mostly in the building and allied trades, mostly A. F. of L.-walked off their jobs. In some places they quit spontaneously, in most they were called off by their union officials. Twenty thousand, 50,000, 75,000, daily the number of strikers rose throughout the nation. In their own minds, the men were protesting against their longer working hours. Actually, their leaders were trying to coerce Congress by direct action to correct a situation which they thought would provide an argument for employers in private industry (especially building...
...issue focused sharply in New York City, where 30,000 of the 32,000 skilled workers on WPA rolls were union men. Thomas A. Murray, president of the Building & Construction Trades Council (A. F. of L.), officially authorized the walkout and declaimed...