Article 4: Labor’s Biggest Organizing Victories Occurred During the Depression Years, May 16, 2008 Read Article
Article 3: Social Security and Other Pro-Worker Laws Were Enacted During the Great Depression, May 13, 2008 Read Article
Article 2: How the New Deal Created Millions of Jobs To Lift the American People from Depression, May 9, 2008 Read Article
Article 1: How Labor and the New Deal in the 1930s Were Able to Change the Face of America, May 4, 2008 Read Article
How Labor and the New Deal in the 1930s
Were Able to Change the Face of America
A Series of Four Articles
By Harry Kelber
This year is the 75th anniversary of the start of the New Deal of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that played a major role, along with trade unions, in beating back the Great Depression and in winning Social Security, unemployment insurance, the 40-hour workweek, the National Labor Relations Act and other progressive legislation.
Harry Kelber is one of the very few labor activists still alive, who was a front-line observer, as well as an active participant, in the 1930s, arguably the most dramatic period in labor history.
Harry Kelber led a four-month strike in 1933 against the second largest food market in Brooklyn, New York. Later in the decade, he became editor of two weekly independent labor papers: the Building Trades Union Press reported on the activities of craft unions in the construction industry. His Trade Union Record covered the rise of the Committee of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and its extraordinary achievements
In this four-part series, he reports on the highlights of that amazing decade. It’s a story union members should know and be proud of
The first article will be posted Tuesday, May 6.
How Labor and the New Deal in the 1930s Were Able to Change the Face of America, Announcement, April 28, 2008 Read Announcement