Public employment

“ What an occupation means in terms of income is more significant than what it means in terms of materials. The most important facts about the cabinet making trade, for example, are that it offers very few opportunities for employment to public school boys, and that it is one of the lowest paid skilled trades. The primary considerations in the intelligent selection of a vocation relate to wages, steadiness of employment, health risks, opportunities for advancement, apprenticeship conditions, union regulations, and the number of chances there are for getting into it. ”

“ The large experience with both municipal and State offices and with the United States Employment Service has given unmistakable evidence that the recruiting and placement of labor is a public necessity and a general benefit to the whole community. ”

“ Full employment1.1, 9.2, 35, 53, 130 131 C1. The public authorities shall promote favourable conditions for social and economic progress and for a more equitable distribution of regional and personal income within the framework of a policy of economic stability. They shall in particular carry out a policy aimed at full employment. ”

“ As to a supposed inexpediency, on economic grounds, of attracting persons from private to the public service, there can be little doubt that things would soon arrange themselves as regularly and quietly in this branch of employment as they do in every other. ”

“ Regularization of Employment.—Government departments and local and public authorities should be enjoined to regularize their work as far as possible, and to endeavour, as far as possible, to undertake their irregular work when the general demand for labour is slack. ”

“ All regular citizens must be supplied with work if they desire it. If they cannot get employment from some firm or corporation, the government officials represented locally must supply it or its equivalent in money. The government controls enough of the business to employ two-thirds of the male population. ”

“ There is an article in our constitution which says:—"Society favours and encourages the development of labour—by the establishment of public works, by the State, the departments, and the parishes, as a means of employing persons who are in want of work." ”

“ If he apply to a labour agency—a perfectly irresponsible medium, be it remembered—not even licensed by the State, or supervised in any official way, he may, after considerable expense, succeed in finding employment. ”

“ Shall I tell them of great towns in which one half at least of the juvenile population is growing up without education of any kind whatever? Shall I show that working people are often permitted to pass their labour time, the half of their lives, in mines, workshops, and manufactories, where an atmosphere of a deleterious kind prevails: and this, too, not from any invincible evil in the nature of the employment, but from a careless or penurious neglect on the part of their employers? ”

“ There is at present in the metropolis, a Society for “improving the dwellings of the p. 116industrious classes;” but what is one society? This is a matter which ought to interest the owners of property, and the employers of labour, throughout the country. Such a society as the one named may do great good by building model houses, making scientific investigations, and frequently laying before the public information on the subject. ”

“ And a 'labor organization' means any organization of any kind or any agency or employee representation committee or plan which exists for the purpose in whole or in part of dealing with employers concerning grievances, labor disputes, wages, rates of pay, hours of employment or conditions of work. ”

“ There is another, and that is the great desirability of every class in the community having a practical knowledge of what labour means. There is a vast amount of work which either is now or is likely to be in the future within the domain of the public administration—road-making, mining, railway work, post-office and telephone work, medical work, nursing, a considerable amount of building for example. Why should we employ people to do the bulk of these things at all? Why should we not as a community do them ourselves? ”

“ The principal instrument which is to be used in the organisation of industry is the labour exchange, from which all employers of casual labour are to be compelled to hire their labour, though labourers will not be compelled to register unless they become in some way chargeable to the public authority. ”

“ The undertaking by the State or the Municipality, or other units of social life, of various departments of industry, such as the railways, telegraphs, post-offices, is a definite assertion that, in the supply of the common services rendered by these industries, the competition of private interests cannot be relied upon to work for the public good. ”

“ THE RIGHT TO WORK 10. All citizens able to work have the right to employment at their vocations and for remuneration fixed for such class of work.
Note. The District Exchange Bureaus of the Department of Labor Distribution may, by agreement with the respective unions, assign individual wage earners or groups of them to work at other trades if there is no demand for labor at the vocations of the persons in question. ”

“ In order to assure efficiency of labor, every wage earner working in an enterprise, establishment or institution (governmental, public or private) employing labor in the form of organized collaboration, as well as the administration of the enterprise, establishment or institution, shall strictly observe the rules of this article of the Code relative to standards of efficiency, output and rules of internal management. ”

“ In co-operation with properly constituted authorities, and as the result of careful, scientific study of the whole situation, the employment department assists in establishing rates of pay commensurate with the work done, with the conditions in the industry, and with their probable effect upon the loyalty, happiness, and consequent efficiency of the employees. ”

“ The economic power of the large enterprises, as compared with that of the individual employee, was such that wages and conditions of employment were pretty much what the employer decided they would be. ”

“ The dominant conception operating in this economic community is that of public service. The theory expressed in the book, however, is subordinated to a description of actual facts—the administrative treatment of labour conditions, unemployment, commerce and finance, which will be found valuable even by those who do not agree with the theory, since the description is the only one which covers contemporary post-war administration. ”

“ Tonight I am announcing the allocation of two and a half million dollars more to enable the Employment Service to make an even more intensive search than it has yet been equipped to make, to find opportunities in private employment for workers registered with it. ”

“ It is my purpose to establish bureaus through the congested portions of the United States where men and women in search of employment can register and be supplied with information as to where and what kind of work is obtainable. And if no work is to be had, I shall arrange that every indigent person that is honest and industrious shall be given employment by the Federal, State, County or Municipal Government as the case may be. Furthermore, it shall in the future be unlawful for any employer of labor to require more than eight hours work a day, and then only for six days a week. ”

“ In any case, it is preposterous that you should have two agencies, each relieving the same people in the same wholesale way, the Employment Exchanges with their scale, asking whether a man is unemployed, and how many children he has to support, and paying him so much, and the Guardians with their scale, asking only the same questions and paying him so much more. ”

“ Some twelve or fifteen work in this establishment, and the people sustain them in their operations. Those engaged in the various branches of labor feel confident that the people will patronize them, and carry out what they have agreed in this particular, and they do not trouble themselves about any other employment, or business. ”

“ The various bureaus of labor, both national and state, consider only those subjects for the investigation of which there is a recognized demand. They are the leaders of [3] public opinion in the accumulation of facts, but they are its followers as regards the choice of questions to be studied. Public opinion has not yet demanded a scientific treatise on domestic service, and until it does the bureaus of labor cannot be expected to supply the material for such discussion. ”

“ The tendency to use the powers of the government chiefly for the promotion of the comfort of the working classes, whether in the matter of land settlement, education, or employment, seems to undergo no diminution. ”

“ With all means of production, distribution and exchange in the hands of the Commonwealth, there would naturally be but one source of employment for labor—The Commonwealth. If you wanted a job, John, you would have to go to the employment bureau of the Commonwealth and present your application, upon which you would be assigned to such a position as might chance to be open at the time your application was received. You are a machinist, but it might chance that machinists are not much in demand on the day you apply for the job. ”

“ To the degree that governments faithfully exercise their legitimate public functions and refrain from interfering with legitimate private functions, they contribute to the Productive Process. This is demonstrated by observable Economic results. Wherever Government approximates a realization of its functions, Economic conditions are manifestly better than where it neglects or abuses them. Evidently, then, Government is a form of human service which, like all other human service forms, belongs as an Economic factor in the Labor category. ”

“ Where the local unemployment is severe, it is open to them to urge upon local authorities and private employers the need for widening the field of employment where necessary, and also to advise the Minister with regard to any difficulties which might be removed by departmental action. ”

“ He protects the business man with the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Interstate Commerce Commission.
HELPING THE WORKING MAN. In the Department of Labor a vast amount of Service is devoted to securing employment for laborers, supplying information concerning labor conditions, pursuing practical investigations for the safety and health of the working men. ”

“ When I said that the workers regulated the conditions of work, I meant the workers as a whole--that is, the people at large, all of whom are nowadays workers, you know. The regulation and mutual adjustment of the conditions of the several branches of the industrial system are wholly done by the General Government. At the same time, however, the regulation of the conditions of work in any occupation is effectively, though indirectly, controlled by the workers in it through the right we all have to choose and change our occupations. ”

“ Certainly these occupations of manufacturing and trade and transportation, are generally considered as our important industries, and a pretty good share of our legislation and public agitation concerns itself with the welfare of these industries and with the men who are employed in them. ”

“ The Minister of Labor shall administer the affairs relating to standards of working conditions, employment stabilization, vocational training, countermeasures against unemployment, employment insurance, industrial accident compensation insurance, laborers' welfare, mediation of labor-management relations, and other labor affairs. ”

“ Through its efforts legislation has been secured. Through its efforts public opinion has been shaped, and it is to its efforts that we must look primarily for future betterment of labor’s condition.
The first step, therefore, is one of organization; and, this step once taken, our [Pg 209] subsequent progress follows logically. As the strength of the organized workers increases, more demands can be made, and with a much better prospect that they will be recognized. Legislatures, like parliaments, are no longer deaf and blind to the requirements of the workers. ”

“ This can be done by developing and maintaining upon an adequate scale the admirable organization created by the Department of Labor for placing men seeking work; and it can also be done, in at least one very great field, by creating new opportunities for individual enterprise. ”

“ If industry is to progress, Capital must elevate its conception of the duties of the Administrative Staff and recognize that administration, even in its lowest branches, is work as skilled as that of an expert craftsman. ”

“ But it is probable that in the future public opinion will be more positive and will grant to labor organizations fuller recognition and greater participation in the control of industrial activity than heretofore. ”

“ The organisation of Workers’ Control is a manifestation of the same healthy activity in the sphere of industrial production, as are party organisations in the sphere of politics, trade unions in employment, Cooperatives in the domain of consumption, and literary clubs in the sphere of culture. ”

“ And who can say that industry, whether agricultural, domestic, manufacturing, scientific, artistic, or commercial, is organized at the present day either in the state or in municipalities? Who can say that all the work which is carried on in any of these departments is executed in subordination to any general views, or with foresight, economy, and order? Or, again, who can say that it is possible in our present state of society to develop, by a good education, all the faculties bestowed by nature on each of its members ”

“ The people have a right to demand here, as in cases of private employment, that their money be paid to those who will render the best service in return, and that the appointment to and tenure of such places should depend upon ability and merit. ”