Fdr Labor Unions Quotes

The answer was regulation. But don't call it regulation, said Roosevelt. "If we call the method regulation, people will hold up their hands in horror and say 'UnAmerican' or 'dangerous.' But if we call the same process co-operation these same old fogeys will cry out 'well done.

Always a good listener, FDR was at his best in these exchanges. "I want you to feel that you can come to me at any time in my office," he was soon telling union spokesmen, "and we can talk matters over. Let's get together for I need you to teach me your business and show me what's going on.

When warned on one occasion that the unions might become too powerful, he was quoted as replying, "Too powerful for what?" His attitude was that their power should prove an antidote for that of big business.

In all of U.S. labor history, few years rival 1934 for drama.59 There had been rumblings in 1933, as rubber plant workers unionized in Akron, Ohio, and prepared a large strike, and Mexican, Japanese, and Filipino fruit pickers struck in California. However, 1934 was an eruption: in 1,856 work stoppages, 1.5 million workers demanded the upholding of Section 7(a). In Toledo, Ohio, auto parts workers won recognition, despite a violent clash that brought out the National Guard. In San Francisco, the Communist-influenced longshoremen won recognition. In October, under pressure, Hugh Johnson succumbed to mental illness, resigning from the NRA after delivering a farewell address to baffled and demoralized staffers comparing himself to Madame Butterfly.60 In the White House, FDR equivocated, as the left continued to agitate.

While Roosevelt ultimately lost the 1912 election, his party’s progressive ideals planted a seed that accessible and affordable medical care might be viewed as a right more than a privilege. It wasn’t long, however, before doctors and southern politicians vocally opposed any type of government involvement in healthcare, branding it as a form of bolshevism. After FDR imposed a nationwide wage freeze meant to stem inflation during World War II, many companies began offering private health insurance and pension benefits as a way to compete for the limited number of workers not deployed overseas. Once the war ended, this employer-based system continued, in no small part because labor unions liked the arrangement, since it enabled them to use the more generous benefit packages negotiated under collective bargaining agreements as a selling point to recruit new members. The downside was that it left those unions unmotivated to push for government-sponsored health programs that might help everybody else.

In the summer of 1935, FDR launched the Second Hundred Days, one of the great thrusts of domestic change ever seen—zero to sixty in an eyeblink, by government time. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act to ensure that the pensionless elderly would not starve, started the Works Progress Administration to keep the government payroll rolling, and backed the National Labor Relations Act, which enshrined union rights in the workplace. The

the mainland secured economic relief while the colonies paid the cost. Beet growers in Colorado weren’t the only ones worried about the colonies. West Coast labor unions nervously eyed the tens of thousands of Filipinos who competed with whites for agricultural jobs—since Filipinos were U.S. nationals, no law stopped them from moving to the mainland. Then there was the military situation to consider. Japan had invaded Manchuria in 1931 and seemed poised to advance on Southeast Asia in pursuit of colonies. The Philippines and Guam stood right in its path. Would the United States really go to war over these faraway, barely known, and not-very-profitable possessions? Maybe it wouldn’t have to. Two years into the Depression, Calvin Coolidge noted a “reversal of opinion” about Philippine independence. A number of politicians, FDR included, were coming around on the issue. Rather than absorbing the Philippines’ trade and migrants and defending it against Japan, the new thinking went, why not just get rid of it? The 1930s are known as a decade of protectionism, when the United States put up hefty tariffs to barricade itself against the world. Now it seemed that this spirit was going to change the very borders of the country. The Philippines was going to be dumped over the castle walls.