Labor

Abstract

The most important influences upon industrial relations and labor conditions after 1930 were the great depression and changes in government policy toward labor. This article traces the history of real earnings, employment and unemployment, and hours of work after 1930; summarizes developments in government labor policy and suggests the character of the impact of these policies; and discusses the progress of unionism and developments within the organized-labor movement. After a great decline between 1929 and 1933, the purchasing power of weekly and average annual earnings turned upward, and by the early 1940's the real income of the working class as a whole seemed to have returned to the pre-depression level. Widespread unemployment and substantial reduction of standard and actual hours of work characterized the period. Government policies, expressed in statutory enactments and judicial decisions, enlarged and extended the rights of labor combinations and implemented the self-organization of the workers. Developments in the field of labor legislation and social insurance made the United States a leading, not as before a laggard, nation in these matters. The outstanding developments in the American organized-labor movement were a great growth of unionism during the years after 1935, the extension of collective bargaining to industries and trades theretofore immune to union penetration, the cleavage in the organized-labor movement, the increased importance of industrial as against craft unionism, and certain functional changes in unionism. Industrial disputes were frequent and bitter during some of the years.