Word: worked
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Administrator Harrington asked Congress for a "security wage" up to $96, based on regional living costs and he said, "It is my recommendation that persons employed on projects of the WPA be required to work 130 hours per month and that the earnings of such persons be on a monthly basis . . . that substantially the present national average labor cost [to WPA] be maintained...
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...
Significance. Fundamental issue raised by the unionists' war on WPA was: what is work-relief? Is it work undertaken by Government to take up slack when private work is lagging? Or is it jobs thought up, invented and financed to occupy idle men, keep alive their working instinct, health and habits, sustain their purchasing power? Into neither of these basic conceptions fits the unions' assumption that work-relief must ensure the pay-scales for which unions have organized and fought, and by which, in fat times, they have profited...
...motor industry, July is a critical month. Then the jigs, dies, tools for next year's models are being completed. As these are finished, the comparatively few, highly skilled men who make them get their seasonal layoff. Until they are finished, work on the new models cannot proceed down the production line. In giant General Motors, the ratio of tool & die makers to the workers who will later produce parts and assemble cars is about...
...corporation; it was stimulating, exciting for the workers: something new in the newspapers every day, and no man knew when his marching orders might come. Moreover, a few men at a time were exerting pressure as menacing as a general walkout would be, while those still at work kept drawing...