Post by midcan5 on Oct 25, 2009 6:57:02 GMT -5
By Steve Fraser
World War II defense contracts raised labor standards. Government could use the same leverage in peacetime.
"The era of Franklin D. Roosevelt transformed the power of workers to achieve a better life. The New Deal facilitated the mass organization of the industrial working class into militant unions and also relied on the state through measures such as the Fair Labor Standards Act and Social Security. But though the New Deal of the 1930s is often remembered as the zenith of progressivism, in many ways World War II marked the high point of this collaboration. Ironically, the war's strengthened military-industrial complex also proved its undoing.
Deficit spending required by war mobilization rapidly produced full employment. The nation's gross national product soared from $91 billion in 1939 to $166 billion in 1945. The military and civilian sectors together saw the creation of 17 million new jobs, mainly high-wage positions in new industries powered by new plants, equipment, and technologies. It was the egalitarian nature and consequences of that growth, however, that was most striking. Progressive-minded public officials and representatives of the labor movement honeycombed newly created agencies charged with manpower mobilization and labor relations, price stabilization, and conversion to military production."
www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_good_war_and_the_workers
World War II defense contracts raised labor standards. Government could use the same leverage in peacetime.
"The era of Franklin D. Roosevelt transformed the power of workers to achieve a better life. The New Deal facilitated the mass organization of the industrial working class into militant unions and also relied on the state through measures such as the Fair Labor Standards Act and Social Security. But though the New Deal of the 1930s is often remembered as the zenith of progressivism, in many ways World War II marked the high point of this collaboration. Ironically, the war's strengthened military-industrial complex also proved its undoing.
Deficit spending required by war mobilization rapidly produced full employment. The nation's gross national product soared from $91 billion in 1939 to $166 billion in 1945. The military and civilian sectors together saw the creation of 17 million new jobs, mainly high-wage positions in new industries powered by new plants, equipment, and technologies. It was the egalitarian nature and consequences of that growth, however, that was most striking. Progressive-minded public officials and representatives of the labor movement honeycombed newly created agencies charged with manpower mobilization and labor relations, price stabilization, and conversion to military production."
www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_good_war_and_the_workers