FDR, New Deals, and the Limits of Power 201Deal and FDR, it is probably his approach to labor. After all, well over 10
million Americans were unemployed and many more were on relief and hun-
gry and lacked medical attention. Because of that, FDR’s policies toward
labor, and the response, and often resistance, of working men and women is
undoubtedly important to study. The 1930s are generally seen as a period of
great accomplishment for labor—for workers and especially unions. Coming
off years of anti-labor state violence, court decisions, and the depression,
workers and unions finally made headway in the New Deal years. Roosevelt
and New Deal Democrats—mostly liberals—stood up for workers and helped
them organize unions, go on strike, and get better wages. Or so the story
goes...
None of those interpretations is necessarily wrong. Labor did emerge from
the New Deal in a much stronger position than before, with legal rights to
organize unions, bargain for wages and work conditions with their bosses, and
in some cases legally strike. None of these accomplishments should be under-
stated—they were vital to making life better for working men and women in
the “new Capitalism.” But the New Deal did not bring about any fundamen-
tal change in labor’s role in the economy. Nothing “radical” emerged out of
the New Deal—no Socialism, no Labor Party, no equal power with Capital.
Labor achieved reform, sometimes meaningful, but it was subordinate, and
clearly so, to the bosses. FDR fixed the system to make Capitalism stronger,
and that meant, as New Deal supporters often said, “giving labor a seat at the
table,” which meant that unions would be consulted on certain economic
policies and would have certain legal rights of organization, bargaining and
strikes—conditions certainly preferable to industrial violence. That transfor-
mation helped the U.S. recover from the depression to some extent, but
firmly within the Capitalist system and without any major changes that
affected the relationship between the corporations, which had power, and the
people who were organizing and joining unions, who did not have power.
When FDR took office, about 15 million Americans were unemployed and
most banks had closed. Labor understood that the problem of the depression
was inadequate consumption, and wanted jobs and wages so it could purchase
the necessities for living. Labor was also tired of the repression by state and
company police and the “cooperation” of the 1920s that did little to make
their lives better. One of the Roosevelt’s first decisions was to appoint Frances
Perkins as Secretary of Labor—the first woman to ever hold a cabinet position.