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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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This personnel function arose also out of the Budget's activity. It was the Budget's recommendation, in its performance of Title II, that every department have a personnel administrator, a personnel office. They must have one. Those were the orders. They even itemized what his duties and functions were. They gave him a great set-up. They had never called them “personnel officers” before.

I was, of course, in favor of having an educated, competent person as a personnel officer and not just some broken-down chief clerk, who never had had any real training. I was the first person in the government that had a real Personnel Officer. I hired one and set him up under one of the Assistant Secretaries. I told him to bring some kind of order out of the hiring system and the promoting system in the Department of Labor. I got Richardson Saundersm who had been the President of a bank in Florida and before that had been head of the Department of Purchases and Accounts in New York City. I don't think I had ever known him in New York, but I knew about him, and I knew who he was. So when I found that because of the Florida crash he was what is known as “at liberty”, I grabbed him quickly. He was simply wonderful in what he did for the Department of Labor - splendid.

He put in some modern personnel methods, without using these over-elaborate fancy ones. He didn't have to go and get a graduate expert to show how you should hire and fire, how to have a system for hearing grievances, how to have a





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