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Aughie and Nia discuss the Department of Labor as the next in the series.
This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
Nia Rodgers: Hey Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
Nia Rodgers: I'm excellent. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm good. Listeners, as the recording started, you probably heard my high-pitched cackle. Before we start recording an episode, Nia and I usually briefly discuss points of emphasis, things we want to make sure we cover with a particular podcast.
Nia Rodgers: But y'all don't be thinking that that's some deep planning. That's like three minutes before we start. We were NPR and we had the whole thing laid out for weeks ahead of time and a producer and the director and people to tell us what to say. I mean I'm a little envious because clearly cereal is marvelous and it works well. Literally, we start like a couple of minutes on how do you want to start? I don't know how do you want to start? It's like one of those things where you're trying to figure out how to go to dinner.
J. Aughenbaugh: One of the reasons why I was chuckling this morning was.
Nia Rodgers: I said I'm sorry. Enough of a little sarcastic. Let's see if that's different from my natural state.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well one, there's that. One of my dominant characteristics according to many is my overarching sarcasm about everything that I encounter in my life.
Nia Rodgers: I'm pretty sure you eat sarcasm for breakfast along with drinking your coffee?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. May I have a helping of sarcasm to be washed down by a pot of coffee.
Nia Rodgers: What brought on the sarcasm was me saying, oh, the government and its organizational techniques because our next department is the Department of Labor.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: But the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we ought to count the people who are working. We ought to count the companies and employment and all those other issues. The government's like yeah, we should count that. Then what they do, they stuck it under interior.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and remember, in a previous podcast episode, listeners, we've talked about how the Department of the Interior's nickname for years was the Department of everything else, the junk room or junk closet of government. We're not entirely sure where we should put this particular agency as a unit. Let's just go ahead and stick it in interior. Nia is referencing the Bureau of Labor Statistics and it was crazy.
Nia Rodgers: Which by the way, still exists as its own thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. It's a unit within the Department of Labor. But it was created in 1884. One of the more fascinating things, at least for me, in our series about federal government cabinet departments, is you can really track the evolution and change of US society with these departments. Because in 1884, you're talking about the era in which the United States was firmly shifting. In the throes of shifting its economy from agrarian to industrialization.
Nia Rodgers: That's the industrial revolution.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the notion of labor can be reflected by the fact that the United States federal government was like, we no longer have just a whole bunch of farmers, we have a whole bunch of people doing other things. Their employment is no longer working on the farm or in a job supporting farms. They're now doing stuff like working in manufacturing plants.
Nia Rodgers: Well, another wages involved. Farmers don't make wages. You either have crop and you sell it and you get money or you don't. But there's no wage between that.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you were hired to work on a farm, it would be seasonal. But at times farmers would pay their workers with what was harvested.
Nia Rodgers: With food or with shelter. You don't get a lot of wage. You have some we're not saying nobody ever earned a wage or anything like that, but we're saying that once you get industrialization, now you have large-scale wages. Now you have large-scale industry that is affecting other large-scale industry. Like if you have, I don't know, Ford Motor Company, which I know is, this is a little early for that, but you have the Ford Motor Company, that's a bunch of industries that have to come together. That's steel, that's tires, that's all those bits. You have all these different things working together. We're getting the beginning of that when we see the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the BLS still puts out those same statistics now. When people say the latest unemployment report, that's coming out of the BLS, that's coming out of fear of Labor Statistics.
J. Aughenbaugh: Their monthly and annual reports are fascinating snapshots of what Americans are actually doing for work.
Nia Rodgers: Just relatively recently in the last 10 years or so, they've had to add the gig economy. Because before that there was no such thing as the gig economy. You either had a job working for a company or you didn't. Now you have these self-employed people who are working in all these different jobs and putting together. The statistical reports that come out of there are really cool and interesting. They also do projections of where Dobbs will be going in the future. I'm just going to say that the prediction in 1700 was, everybody's going to be a farmer. It was pretty easy prediction to think because you don't get a whole lot of other people in any other stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: When I was in high-school sitting down with a guidance counselor who actually took an annual report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and said, well, Mr. Aughenbaugh, if you actually want a worthwhile career or profession, you should go into these fields. You even see newspaper articles even today. Again, near to where they will take a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and go ahead and say, these are the jobs of the future.
Nia Rodgers: You time is coming up.
J. Aughenbaugh: They're not making it up. They're taking it from what the Bureau of Labor Statistics is projecting.
Nia Rodgers: It's really cool. Where I was being sarcastic was, of course, the government would decide to count a thing before it decided who would count the thing. Because sometimes the government doesn't do things in the tidiest order.
J. Aughenbaugh: There's not a linear thought process. In the history of the Department of Labor really demonstrates how non-linear the federal government's thinking can be. Because it was first, the Bureau of Labor Statistics was placed in the Department of the Interior. Then in 1903 it became a bureau again.
Nia Rodgers: It was a bureau within the Department of Interior then it became its own jam for a few years like it was its own Department of Labor except it didn't have a secretary.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. For 15 years we had the Bureau of Labor, but it lacked cabinet status.
Nia Rodgers: Probably you had somebody in charge but they want the secretary, they would just, you know, that guy that runs the Department of Labor. Oh, I didn't realize we had a Department of Labor in the executive, sir. We don't. Stood over there in the corner doing his thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Certainly, didn't show up to the cabinet meetings with the president. Then in 1903, it becomes a bureau again within the newly created Department of Commerce and Labor.
J. Aughenbaugh: But then 10 years later, and this just absolutely fascinates me because this would never happen today, the United States Congress passed a bill creating a standalone Department of Labor as a cabinet level department and the outgoing president signs it, leaving to his successor, who just beat him in the presidential election of 1912 to appoint our first Secretary of Labor, that would never happen today.
N. Rodgers: Oh no.
J. Aughenbaugh: The way partisan politics are today, no Congress is going to go ahead and give an outgoing President the opportunity one to reject a bill that they just passed, creating a brand new department and then to have that President give their successor the opportunity to claim the first Secretary of Labor in our country's history.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, it just wouldn't be done. That was President Taft. He signs that and then he's like somebody else gets to name the first one. You know that now if a president on his last day got that opportunity, he would quickly name someone so he could say, "And I named the first Secretary of the Department of foo and war. We're too partisan for that to happen today.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Almost immediately the Department of Labor gets a stain on its institutional history.
N. Rodgers: Is that because his name was also Wilson? I find that hilarious. Again, we go to the names thing. His name isn't particularly interesting. William B. Wilson is the first Secretary of Labor. But he's under President Wilson, which I just think why not confuse the issue with Mr. Wilson whenever you're in a cabinet meeting? I guess you'd say Mr. President and Mr. Wilson.
J. Aughenbaugh: But where I was going was the fact that the department had a rather large role when the United States entered World War I.
N. Rodgers: Well, yeah, it had only been in existence for three or four years at that point?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. In particular, the department advocated for the rights of workers, which becomes a huge issue during the war because there are many industries that need to provide, if you will, materials, weapons, food, clothing, etc. for the nation's war effort, and many of those industries weren't all that interested in workers' rights, they were interested in giving the federal government what it wanted.
N. Rodgers: Getting the contracts.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, so they could make money.
N. Rodgers: Your business would make a lot of money if you've got a contract to make x number of uniforms or whatever. But on the flip of that, unions, that's a great time for a union to say really, you need us to be up all night doing that? We're going to have to have these following adjustments.
J. Aughenbaugh: We need certain kinds of benefits and protections.
N. Rodgers: Thank you. That's it.
J. Aughenbaugh: it was during this period of time that the Department of Labor wanted to recognize the rights of workers to bargain collectively.
N. Rodgers: That's when you get your first allowed unions. Is that?
J. Aughenbaugh: No. We don't get that until the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s.
N. Rodgers: Oh, okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: But it creates a tension. As the Department of Labor is working to protect workers during the war, post-war, many of those workers were like, we want some of the protections we had during the war effort to continue on in the post World War I 1920s. You saw workers engaging in strikes. The reaction of the Justice Department was, well, a lot of the strikes are being instigated by foreign influences, people who have proclaimed a membership in groups like the Socialist Party of the United States, the Communist Party of the United States.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say pink economies.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. You had the first, if you will, red scare in the history of the United States was during the 1920s. But the Department of Labor was one of the few federal government departments that pushed back against this effort to round up strikers because they were just like, our job is to promote, protect, and develop standards for all labor in the United States.
N. Rodgers: You're also seeing that tension in the shift between patriotic war service, you should serve your country to when you come after World War I and people say, hey, but we really liked that eight hour workday and we really liked being able to grieve a problem within the workplace if we felt it was dangerous or we felt it was something else and people saying, no, we're going back to our old ways of labor without rights. People are like, yeah, but I've had a taste of rights and I liked them. You're having that tension back and forth, and it's interesting the Department of Labor because usually what the government struggles with is finding the place between promoting a thing but regulating a thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because we regularly see that that's the tension. If Aughie has not taught us anything else in this entire run of podcasts is that that is almost always the tension of the federal government. How do I promote a thing while still protecting either the thing or the people who work in the thing? Think in terms of the interior, how do I promote oil drilling in this country, because there's a need for that, while still protecting federal lands from being over drilled and there's always tension. It's interesting to me that labor comes down more on the side of the people, although that is the name. You would think that would be the case.
J. Aughenbaugh: That was the case until we get into the 1920s when you have a series of Republican presidential administrations and the Secretary of Labor, and throughout a number of these administrations was James J. Davis, when people were still using their middle initial.
N. Rodgers: Dwight D. Eisenhower, what does the D stand for? Nothing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Harry S. Truman.
N. Rodgers: Oh no, Dwight David Eisenhower is Harry S. Truman.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's Truman. The Department of Labor in the 1920s was more neutral. Davis, historical papers have indicated was somewhat cooperative in helping the federal government enforce very restrictive immigration laws in deportation of undesirable aliens.
N. Rodgers: Organizers and people who would do things with unions to try to protect workers and that thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Those are the ones we're talking about as being undesirable.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: But then once again, you can almost get whiplash following the Department of Labor's history, because while the 1920s, the Department of Labor was "more neutral". In the 1930s, the Department of Labor was extremely active.
N. Rodgers: Is that in part because of the depression?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. We talked about this with a number of the alphabet agencies that the Roosevelt Administration created to help labor. Again, the unemployment rate was, some years during the Great Depression, at least 25 percent.
N. Rodgers: That's terrifying. A quarter of your population are out of work.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then there was, according to some scholars, another 10-12 percent of the adult population that was underemployed. They just stopped looking for work. They weren't making it onto the unemployment rolls because they just gave up. That's stunning. That's a third of the population that was not engaged in significant meaningful labor.
N. Rodgers: Which is why you see hunger and you see people moving around the country trying to find work.
J. Aughenbaugh: They're losing their homes, they're losing their property. FDR, appointed as a Secretary of Labor, the first female cabinet member in our country's history.
J. Aughenbaugh: A very talented, significant Cabinet Secretary, Frances Perkins. She still holds the record for the longest serving Secretary of Labor in our country's history. The Department of Labor building in Washington DC is named after her.
N. Rodgers: It's for him that he had the first female cabinet secretary. I think we think of that as likely more recent thing but no, it goes back to 1933.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's pretty awesome. But she had worked for him before, I think, hadn't she? She'd been part of when he was governor, she worked for him.
J. Aughenbaugh: She was his Commissioner of Labor.
N. Rodgers: She'd been around this block before because he was Governor of New York, Pennsylvania.
J. Aughenbaugh: New York. Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Okay. She'd done labor in a big state. It's not like he was governor of forgive me. I love you Wyoming. But Wyoming where you've got 10 people who you have to manage their labor. Like it's not, New York is densely populated, it was densely populated even then.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, labor issues in a large urban state are grossly different than labor issues in a largely rural state in the Mountain West. I mean, they just are. She was very prominent in encouraging Roosevelt. Let's be fair, Roosevelt never went as far as Frances Perkins wanted him to go in regards to supporting labor. But she helped set up the triple C, the Civilian Conservation Corps, which we had talked about previously, where you took unemployed workers in urban areas and you had them work on conservation projects in rural areas. Which again, in the United States in the 1930s, rural areas frequently were without running water, indoor plumbing, affective sewer systems, etc. This was like a win-win for not only labor but also rural areas. But her biggest contribution and it's still with us today, Nia, is Social Security.
N. Rodgers: Was that her?
J. Aughenbaugh: She's the one who hounded Roosevelt and all of his White House Advisors, that this nation needed a pension system. She convinced Roosevelt to ask Congress to create it in 1935 and it's still with us today. It's one of the more fascinating federal government programs that had created in the United States.
N. Rodgers: You know though, it makes sense to me that it would have been her actually. Now that I think about it because you have that switchover again. Back in the day, what would happen is you'd have a farm. You and your spouse, you and your wife have a farm and you have children, and if your farm is big enough, you divide it between your male children. You're assuming you're female children will marry someone else who has property of their own. But either way you divide that out between your children and then you live in the big house or the old house or whatever they would call it and your kids take care of you when you are too old to work because you are living there with them. But now you're seeing, in the 30s, you're seeing this urbanized people may not be living together in that way, so oldsters are not immediately looked after by their family necessarily. If that's the case, then you would need some sort of pension system to help them pay their bills when they're older, to help them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sociologists, Nia, chronicle how when the United States economy shifted from agrarian to industrialization. The family support system, that was the foundation of basically you from cradle to grave, no longer existed. So how do you replace that? It was government officials like Frances Perkins who was like, you replace it with the government creating things like a pension system because in effect that's what Social Security became. Now, the other advantage of the Social Security system was it also addressed a more immediate public policy problem which was we had a whole bunch of older Americans who lost their life savings when there was the run on banks and many banks foreclosed.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, this had a ripple effect. Nobody did it address a longer-term, if you will issue that was arising, not only in the United States but in other Western democracies. It also addressed a more specific, concrete public policy problem, which is we add a whole bunch of older Americans who lost their life savings. Right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: It wasn't just a matter of creating a pension system. It was a matter of how do we go ahead and make sure that a whole bunch of older Americans in the next 5-10 years actually have money to live on, unless we were just going to give them direct welfare payments. At that point, the United States segways from capitalism to socialism. FDR didn't want any of that because he was already being accused.
N. Rodgers: Of being a socialist.
J. Aughenbaugh: Of being a socialist. Politically, that was how astute Frances Perkins was. Okay?
N. Rodgers: That's pretty clever. I had not even thought of it that way, but you're right that the immediate need for those folks, and we do have to keep in mind that the life expectancy in 1933 was significantly less than it is now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: But they were not expecting for people to be on that system for 20, 30, 40 years, they were expecting probably the last 5-10 years of their lives.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: That's a difference in the system the way it is now. It has not been adjusted. Probably in the ways that it needs to be adjusted for the length of time that people will theoretically be on it going forward.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that's right.
N. Rodgers: Something for us to explore, maybe in another podcast is, what's going to happen with Social Security. So, I think it's interesting that there's stuff that Congress does at that point that also makes sure that there's an eight-hour workday and that as the secretary, she can set the minimum wage rate based on locally prevailing rates.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah so again, I know it sounds like listeners that we are praying or worshiping at the altar or Frances Perkins, but she did a lot of stuff that fundamentally changed labor conditions in the United States.
Nia Rodgers: That we now think of as natural rights. Of course, I have the right to an eight-hour workday. Of course I have the right to a minimum wage. But before that, your workday is what I tell you it is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
Nia Rodgers: Your wage is what I give you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Management had control. You know, Frances Perkins pushed for the Wagner Act to be passed in 1933. This is where you get, for instance, the creation of the National Labor Relations Board, which we still have today.
Nia Rodgers: Unemployment insurance.
J. Aughenbaugh: Unemployment insurance in [inaudible] to your point. We get a federal government minimum wage. But there's language in that initial law that said minimum wage would vary depending on the local conditions.
Nia Rodgers: Yeah. We don't get a federal minimum wage until much later. I think. But yeah, this idea that Secretary could set that is fascinating to me.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. What you may need to live. Again, we'll use New York City is different than what you may need to live in Charleston, South Carolina.
Nia Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or Houston, Texas or Tacoma, Washington.
Nia Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again that's a nuance you hardly ever see.
Nia Rodgers: In the federal government.
J. Aughenbaugh: The federal government.
Nia Rodgers: Yeah, we love the federal government, but it doesn't always understand that when it makes a rule it will have different applications in different places by necessity.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because for the federal government, typically in most agencies, what's the old adage, to a hammer everything looks like a nail.
Nia Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: The federal government typically uses blunt instruments.
Nia Rodgers: Right. Everyone will make three dollars an hour regardless of what. Well, okay. But in some places you don't need three dollars in an hour, in some places you need seven dollars an hour. I like that it's prevailing rates. Did she stay after FDR died?
J. Aughenbaugh: No. FDR's successor was Harry Truman and in Perkins. By the way, this is pretty much the norm that we even see today. Even if the successor president is from the same political party, most cabinet secretaries voluntarily resigned to give the new president an opportunity to pick their people.
Nia Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: She resigned, and things got really difficult in regards to labor. Because again, we're talking postwar. In listeners, this is one of the themes in regards to labor conditions in the United States, particularly after World Wars I and II, you could even say even after the Korean War, when a war ends, a nation as large as the United States, its economy struggles to regain equilibrium.
Nia Rodgers: Because you've been on a war footing, you've been making worst stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Everything is directed towards supporting the war effort. But when the war ends, all those sacrifices that people are making, people don't want to make them anymore.
Nia Rodgers: I don't want a victory garden, I want to go out to dinner.
J. Aughenbaugh: I don't want wages controlled by a contract that the United States federal government set up with my corporation that I've worked for. I want to negotiate a living wage.
Nia Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: You see this.
Nia Rodgers: Don't you get a lot of inflation and stuff like that after wars? Economy, I know we don't have time to go into the economies of pre and post and during wars, although it would be fun to do that at some point. But I think that you just get all that where it's harder to buy stuff it's harder. Manufacturing has to retool, there are things now that people want that they can't get because they're not being made yet or they're not being made in sufficient numbers yet.
J. Aughenbaugh: Incorporations are hedging their bets because they're trying to figure out where consumer demand will be, whereas consumers are just like, okay, I'm home from the war, I got a good job, and I want to buy a house, and I want to buy a house here, but there's very little supply of houses so I want to build a house. But the construction industry is like, well, we're waiting to see what demand there is before we ramp up all of the supplies we need to build homes.
Nia Rodgers: Because we don't know if people are going to want to live in Richmond or Austin or Seattle or wherever.
J. Aughenbaugh: There's this lag.
Nia Rodgers: Makes sense.
J. Aughenbaugh: Workers, after sacrificing are like, well, what we have in terms of leverage is an ability to strike.
Nia Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: But the United States Congress in 1947 passed the Taft-Hartley Act. Which in many ways was very anti-union, and Congress also reduced the budget of the Department of Labor because there thought was we don't need a huge department of labor because post-war, we have a whole bunch of soldiers coming home from the war, so labor is plentiful.
Nia Rodgers: Abundant.
J. Aughenbaugh: We also know that women can be part of the labor force because they had a essential jobs during World War II.
Nia Rodgers: Yes, but there was a whole attempt to shove women back into the house.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, sure.
Nia Rodgers: Get back to where you belong. Didn't they also see the Department of Labor is supporting union? Because it had supported unions. It had supported this idea of collective bargaining and people being able to get fair treatment, and then you see this swing, you right, it's like a pendulum. It swings back to unions. All they do is ruin everything. Bunch of pink commies. Because now you've got this opposition to the Russia that's coming in to USSR. Sorry, not Russia to the USSR the Department. The USSR is pro-union, pro-labor, pro. Anything that smacks of that, is not to be seen as.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, this is where we get our second Red Scare, post-World War II.
Nia Rodgers: When you have your McCarthy yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: The House Un-American committee hearings. The late 1940s through the 1950s Nia, was not one of the high points so the department of labor. Interestingly enough, even in the 1960s with a president like Lyndon Baines Johnson, his war on poverty. Johnson actually ask the Congress at least two different times to consider the idea of reuniting the Labor Department with commerce. Because he argued both departments had similar goals, and he thought that having one department would create efficient if you will, achievement of those goals.
Nia Rodgers: Okay, I could see that.
J. Aughenbaugh: But Congress never acted on it.
Nia Rodgers: Of course.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because, well, because at that point, each department had their own stakeholders.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you merge these departments are, interests are going to get lost. In this much larger unified department. Again, that's bureaucratic politics, one-on-one folks.
Nia Rodgers: Once a thing exists, it is hard to eradicate the thing or.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Change the thing to something else because there will be opponents to the sheer idea of change.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: That's the other thing that you run into with the federal government is bureaucratic politics in the sense of, oh no, we're here and we exist. If we change at all, it will be a disaster. We're not going to change anything.
J. Aughenbaugh: But our big next shift in the Department of Labor is focus Nia and I know this is going to shock listeners. Actually comes in the Nixon administration.
Nia Rodgers: We all have to stop thinking of Nixon is just the greatest evil thing in the world.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because it was Nixon's Department of Labor who won, pushed for greater racial diversity in unions in the United States. His Secretary of Labor is an individual that Bill Newman and I talked about in a previous podcast episode, George Shultz. Because Shultz later on also served as Secretary of State. I want to say he was the head of Economic Advisors for future president. Again, he was one of those cabinet secretaries that because of his background. Could serve as a manager no matter what was the subject matter focus of the department.
Nia Rodgers: If that name sounds familiar to younger listeners, it may be because you watched a film called Theranos?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: He was actually one of the people who gave Elizabeth. I can't remember her last name. Money to start that company.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: He was venture capitalists for her.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then he was one of the first to go ahead and speak out about the alleged fraud.
Nia Rodgers: His grandson?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
Nia Rodgers: His grandson who worked there. But what I think is interesting is something you mentioned there is this idea of unions being racially diverse because I assume that that's coming on the end of the Supreme Court. Moving in the direction of this desegregation.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. One of the targets of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s was that labor unions in the United States, almost all of them were headed up by old white men.
Nia Rodgers: Or dead white men in the case of Jimmy Hoffa.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, that comes in the 1970s. You make a good point.
Nia Rodgers: I don't think he's I think he's on an island somewhere.
J. Aughenbaugh: Labor organizations that are supposed to represent all workers. Didn't look like all workers.
Nia Rodgers: They represented white workers for the most part. You're not seeing that with. Now at some point along this route, aren't we going to get my favorite department in the government ever at all, which is OSHA
J. Aughenbaugh: Well and again, this arises, with the Nixon administration. The Labor Department with authorizing legislation from Congress in 1970, created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. They were supposed to create regulations to project against hazards in the workplace.
Nia Rodgers: I'm not trying to be ugly to the other bureaus and administrations within the government. I love you all. But OSHA is dear to my heart because if you read OSHA, like if you read their newsletter. It's absolutely fascinating the things they will tell you you should not be doing in the workplace. Do not place your hand in this grinder. Like yes, I needed the government to tell me not to do that. Like, I was pretty sure that wasn't going to be a good idea anyway, but thanks OSHA. I love this and I know that perceived by manufacturers as nitpicking. Why do I have to put up a sign that says, don't stick your hand in this grinder. It's because OSHA says you need to put a sign on that telling people not to do that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because OSHA will get reports.
Nia Rodgers: Somebody's sticking their hand in the grinder. It's sucked in my glasses and I just reached in to try to get them or whatever like. Then they'd come by and they'd look at the thing and they say, "Yeah, that's really dangerous, put a guard on it and then put a sign above it not to put your hand on it."
J. Aughenbaugh: OSHA gets synthesized from all quarters Nia.
Nia Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: OSHA gets criticized for businesses as you pointed out, being nitpicky, issuing rules and regulations that jack up the costs of doing business, labor complaints, that OSHA never has enough inspectors. Gross, workplace, safety violations and hazards never get addressed. Then you have people like us who by and large have been workers most of our lives. Where we will go into breakout rooms and we will see the OSHA. Flyers reminding us not to go ahead and do X, which causes us to laugh and chuckle. But we happen to know workers, colleagues.
Nia Rodgers: Who would do that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Will you do that stuff.
Nia Rodgers: Without the warning, yes. They get dragged down by every single individual. Yet, all they're trying to do is just make the workplace just a little bit safer.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes [inaudible] You should be able to go to work.
Nia Rodgers: Without losing an eye.
Nia Rodgers: At the end of today be able to go home with all of your body parts intact.
J. Aughenbaugh: Your time off of work.
N. Rodgers: I love osha.
J. Aughenbaugh: Before we wrap up there's a couple of other things that the Nixon administration did. That again, I don't think we give the Nixon administration enough credit. The Nixon administration was the first presidential administration that actually created numerical hiring goals for federal government contractors in large urban areas. They're referred to in the literature as Philadelphia plans because they were first instituted for federal government contracts in the city of Philadelphia.
N. Rodgers: If you give the federal government contract your workforce must be diverse?
J. Aughenbaugh: Must be diverse.
N. Rodgers: It must be diverse by for X percentage of people, whatever the percentage of people who live in the area, that percentage has to work for your cooperation as.
J. Aughenbaugh: Your company has to have the percentage of plumbers that are people of color or minorities.
N. Rodgers: Right. There's a whole group of people who would say those are quota system. Yes. The reason it's a quota system is because before that, those companies would be largely white and white workers would get those contracts.
J. Aughenbaugh: Federal government contracts historically always went to white owned firms that had.
N. Rodgers: White workers.
J. Aughenbaugh: White workers.
N. Rodgers: That's not fair.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's not fair. It even if that wasn't the stated policy, that was the result.
N. Rodgers: This changes that and says no, you have to have diversity in your organization in order to get a contract from us. Again, a really good thing that comes out of the Nixon administration.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then the next thing is, and I'm reminded of this with all of the older generations within my family, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, known as Erisa of 1974. The Department of Labor was given the job of protecting and improving the nation's private retirement systems. Because what would happen is that in a number of private industries, you were told that when you retired, you had a pension. But what did companies frequently underfund to meet the bottom line.
N. Rodgers: Have pensions.
J. Aughenbaugh: Pension systems.
N. Rodgers: They were assuming you'd also get Social Security.
J. Aughenbaugh: This particular law has also been used to go ahead and protect what many of us now have. Individual retirement accounts. It's this law that gives the federal government the authority to make sure that your IRAs, no matter what's going on in the stock market.
N. Rodgers: Are protected.
J. Aughenbaugh: Are protected. Again, this happens in the Nixon administration.
N. Rodgers: Nixon's in some way he's so moderate that in some ways he might be.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, today he would probably be.
N. Rodgers: A Democrat. Wouldn't he?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. He would be a democrat.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. I mean, he'd be a conservative democrat. Yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: But we always conclude these episodes listeners with prominent Secretaries of a particular department. Again, the Department of Labor is just chock full of really prominent government and political officials in a department. Again, folks has only been in existence for slightly over 100 years. I mean, think about that.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. Weirdly you will know several of these names at which you can always pick out who the Department of Transportation is. But labor does so many things that affect directly affect regular humans.
J. Aughenbaugh: Humans, yes.
N. Rodgers: You get Frances Perkins, she's your first and we got George Shultz. We know about George Shultz. Can I mentioned one?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, go ahead.
N. Rodgers: Elizabeth Dole, baby doll. The reason I say that is because she's from North Carolina and she's my hometown girl in that way. But also she served as labor secretary. She served as secretary of transportation for Reagan. She served as a US senator.
J. Aughenbaugh: Ran for president.
N. Rodgers: Elizabeth Dole was just.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, at one point I remember mainstream press saying she might be our first female president. She was that prominent in Republican Party circles.
N. Rodgers: She was a moderate, conservative Republicans, like just a moderate, individual.
J. Aughenbaugh: Mainstream.
N. Rodgers: Salt of the earth. I actually heard her speak lunch and she was very plain simple spoken just, you know.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: I can't remember what she's running for, but she's like, you should elect me for this because it just will be a good idea. For the most part was and of course, she was married to Bob Dole.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Another, if you will.
N. Rodgers: Served for 1,000 years in the Senate.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I mean, you know, they were a Service family. They did a lot of service. You have a couple of other, I think family people on this list, people who served with.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, we'll get to that name. I know who you're talking about. For those of us who are Supreme Court aficionados, Arthur Goldberg was appointed to the Supreme Court, but LBJ infamously convinced him to step down from Scotus to serve as the US ambassador to the United Nations. So LBJ could get his good friend a fortress on the court. Then we have Ray Donovan. Ray Donovan was Reagan's first Secretary of Labor. He was indicted for his role in the New York subway construction cost overruns in kickbacks. He ran a construction company in New York.
N. Rodgers: But he didn't do it.
J. Aughenbaugh: He did not do it, but it ruined his life.
N. Rodgers: He got accused and if you're a clear the media has a way of ruining your life no matter even if you oh, oh, and by the way, he was acquitted. They spent hours and hours telling you how guilty he is and then five-minutes telling you that he was acquitted.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Clinton's first labor secretary is a very well-known progressive. Well, he's been an academic, he's been a Cabinet Secretary, Robert Reich.
N. Rodgers: He has a great YouTube channel if you're curious listeners and you want to see more about him, he breaks down labor things very simply, very clearly, which comes from his professor days.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Then of course, Nia, you and I are fascinated by the last prominent Labor of Secretary, Eugene Scalia.
N. Rodgers: That name sounds familiar.
J. Aughenbaugh: Familiar.
N. Rodgers: We've mentioned Justice Scalia. Only about 460 billion times podcast.
J. Aughenbaugh: Eugene Scalia was Trump's second. When you mentioned trump's cabinet secretaries.
N. Rodgers: You have to number them.
J. Aughenbaugh: You have to number them because it may not [inaudible] .
N. Rodgers: Non of them serve the entire four years.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: He had a high turnover rate.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Right. Yeah.
N. Rodgers: He had a high turnover rate. You have to number them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. But Eugene Scalia, the son of former Supreme Court Justice, at one-point, was considered, somebody who might be appointed to a federal judgeship. But nevertheless, yeah, so a fascinating department and mean Nia, I think you accurately described the importance of the Department of Labor. It affects.
N. Rodgers: Regular humans.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. It's mission is to go ahead and basically protect all of us who are workers. We don't own capital. We don't run corporations. We just work for the "Demand."
N. Rodgers: Labor keeps us from the man running over us with the truck?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Osha would put a thing on the front. Do not stand in front of this truck. Otherwise. Corporations look out for themselves. That's not an unreasonable thing in a capitalist society. But the workers often get left in the cold end from that.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Thank you labor for trying to help us.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Not that Labor's listening, but if they did, I can help.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie and this has been really interesting. If you're interested in Perkins, I'm going to put a link to her history on the guide, because she's really interesting woman.
J. Aughenbaugh: Just fascinating individual.
N. Rodgers: Cool. Thank you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thank you Nia.
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