When America Came 'This Close' to Establishing a 30-Hour Workweek

[bananas]

http://www.alternet.org/labor/when-america-came-close-establishing-30-hour-workweek

When America Came 'This Close' to Establishing a 30-Hour Workweek

Saturday, April 6, 2013, marks the 80th anniversary of a long-forgotten event in American history that bears remembering, especially by progressives.

By John de Graaf
April 2, 2013


The April 15, 1933 issue of Newsweek, one of the first in the magazine’s history, contains a remarkable cover headline: Bill cutting work week to 30 hours startles the nation. Indeed only nine days earlier, on April 6th, the Black-Connery Bill had passed in the United States Senate by a wide margin. The bill fixed the official American work week at five days and 30 hours, with severe penalties for overtime work.

In his new book, Free Time, labor historian, Benjamin Hunnicutt of the University of Iowa, explains that the bill originally had broad support as a means of increasing employment during the recession and maintaining full employment in the future.

“We stand unflinchingly for the six-hour day and the five-day week in industry,” thundered AFL president William Green to a labor meeting in San Francisco that spring. Franklin Roosevelt and Labor Secretary Frances Perkins also initially endorsed the idea, but the president buckled under opposition from the National Association of Manufacturers and dropped his support for the bill, which was then defeated in the House of Representatives.

In its place, Roosevelt advocated job-creating New Deal spending and a forty-hour workweek limit, passed into law on October 24, 1938, as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

<snip>

[DonCoquixote]

1. Just goes to show

That FDR made compromises, and that the people enamored of some Socialist revolution hated him then.

[PATRICK]

2. The other edge of the sword

That would have defined 'full-time" employees as those working 30 hours and entitled to all that consideration. Now, with everything ratcheted toward misery and deprivation we have 30 hour part-time weeks at minimal pay, no benefits or any other consideration- even though the underpaid employees crave the extra hours just for the meager pay.

Does it really create more jobs to eliminate 'full-time" for minimal wage, no benefits part-time? The squeeze on the bottom line is still relentless even at the peril of the real business. They fire part-timers at will rather than convert a single job to full time or award the benefits accrued by mere seniority.

It's all part of a picture. The fish rots from the head as the proverb goes.

[n2doc]

3. Likely had this passed it would have been rescinded during WWII

Who knows if it would have been brought back afterwards.

[raccoon]

4. Interesting bit of history....but almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. nt