BNY in the Inter-War Era                                                    BNY Labor History

The New Deal Yard, Part I
Introduction
Policy Continuity: The Manipulation of Wages and Hours Continues
    Another Pay Cut
    A Third Pay Cut Is Attempted
The Issue of Raises
Recovery
The Issue of Raises, Again
Mid-Decade Personnel Policy Developments
Conclusion
Chart: Hours per Week Worked by Trade Employees of the BNY, 1930-1934

Introduction
Ever since his inauguration on 4 March 1933 historians and others of a prgressive bent have presented the coming to power of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a new, Democratic dawn, breaking after a dozen years of Republican darkness.  And there is much to be said for this point of view: the bank holidays following immediately upon his entering the White House, and the passing of so many important pieces of legislation, climaxing within three months and a week of Congress being called into session with the enactment of the mammoth National Industrial Recovery Act on 16 June 1933.  Organized labor celebrated this last law, with its famous Title I, section 7a clause, as a  rebirth of the movement.  It was all most impressive, especially in hindsight. [“American labor history took an eventful turn with the coming of the New Deal on March 4, 1933.  The eight years that followed . . . witnessed remarkable and significant changes in the labor movement, in American industry, and in public policy relating to collective bargaining.” Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933-1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1970).]

But in the economic reality of the day-to-day, the Rooseveltian sun ascended slowly, and especially so for certain businesses, such as shipbuilding.  Commercial shipbuilding was practically moribund in 1933, the industry surviving sparingly on the modest warship production it shared with the government navy yards. Even with the early announcement of the first stage of an expanded naval construction program, it took over a year for ships to be anything more than just blueprints or requisitions for materials.  By 1935 the NIRA and Vinson-Trammell shipbuilding programs had increased employment figures, and productive enterprises like the Brooklyn Navy Yard became a beacon of economic stability in the sea of Depression troubles.  By the beginning of Roosevelt’s second term the work force at the navy yard had doubled its pre-Crash numbers.

But initially, Roosevelt's new administration felt the need to maintain budgetary frugality--FDR had even ran partly against Hoover's spending program--and this resulted in the government mandating further cuts in the wages and salaries of federal employees.  In time, Congress overrode the president's will and restored the government workers' pay, and even went on to increase workers' benefits, but Roosevelt's financial policies and the production lag in shipbuilding ensured that for the workers in the Brooklyn Navy Yard that that first year of the new president's administration proved bleaker than the last year of the Hoover administration.

This first section will tell that story.  The second section will then explain how Roosevelt’s very different attitude toward naval rearmament brought the Brooklyn Navy Yard out of the Depression with a surge of production not seen in the Yard since the Great War.  This particular chapter of labor history, as are the others that follow, tell different stories than the ones we usually read about for this era.  There is no tale here of the Blue Eagle or of the effect on workers and their unions of the NIRA's section 7(a), or its replacement, the NLRA, nor will the Social Security and Fair Labor Standards Acts be mentioned in anything but passing.  Also missing are the great tales of union struggle for recognition, often accompanied by violent strikes and other mass actions.  This is a different labor story, that of the federal workforce, one rarely told.  While it may miss the overt drama of the struggle in the private sector, it nonetheless is a story of people struggling to keep their heads above water in the midst of economic turmoil and war.  [To see some of the differences in government labor history.]

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Policy Continuity: The Manipulation of Wages and Hours Continues
Federal employees may well have felt relief on 4 March.  The day before, President Hoover in one of his last acts had signed off on an appropriation bill that therein reemphasized in clearer language the Economy Act’s prohibition of pay increases within a trade or occupation, and the Budget Office had already ordered an impounding of wage funds greater than the one-twelfth already returned to the Treasury.  However, Hoover’s overall public-works spending had helped sink the federal government deeper into debt and Roosevelt was under pressure in 1933 to reduce government spending, especially from his fiscally conservative Budget Director, Lewis Douglas.  And so, among the very first issues the new Congress, called into immediate emergency session, concerned itself with was the wage schedule of government employees.

Despite the electioneering rhetoric FDR had to find some way for the government to alleviate the economic misery of the country, and within a relatively short time Roosevelt and Congress worked themselves out of their predecessor’s predicament of how to spend government dollars to fight the Depression without increasing the deficit.  The solution was to create “two” federal budgets: one was the “normal” operating budget which needed constant supervision and pruning; and the second, an “emergency” budget created to finance by means of loans the various NIRA’s Title II programs.  Regrettably for them, the wage and benefit schedule for federal employees was part of the normal budget. [Letter, Dungan, to Captain Delano, 17 October 1933; RG181; NA-NY; BDE articles of spring 1933; Leuchtenberg, Roosevelt and the New Deal; Davis, FDR, the New Deal Years (New York: Random House, 1986); McElvaine, Great Depression.  An example of how the double-budgeting worked: On 30 June 1933, the end-date of fiscal year 1933, the government announced it was $1.2 billion in debt, that some 387,000 veterans had lost their allowances, and that 12,000 federal employees would be laid off.  But simultaneously, it stated that the states could now hire up to 100,000 men for highway construction and improvement projects through a $400 million grant just then made available by the PWA. BDE, 1 July 1933, 3.]
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Another Pay Cut
It took Congress just two weeks, to 20 March, to produce a budget bill.  The new law quickly became controversial in that it cut veterans’ pensions drastically.  Lesser publicized though was its Title II.  It gave the president authorization to use federal agencies to research the cost of living for the first half of 1928 in order to set up an index which would then be used as a base against which the cost-of-living index for the last half of 1932, and for each half-year forthcoming would be compared. [Davis, FDR, the New Deal Years; Section 3(a), 3(b), Title II, “An Act to Maintain the Credit of the United States Government,” March 20, 1933.  Reprinted in: Hosen, The Great Depression and the New Deal: Legislative Acts in Their Entirety, 1932-1933.]

The findings were obviously not a surprise, but they served to give the president political cover to reduce government wages further.  And so by this circuitous route the 8.33 per cent cut of the 1932 Economy Act was replaced by one of fifteen per cent, the monies impounded by the Treasury Department.  The reduction took effect on 1 April and Roosevelt later extended it for a second six-month period.  However, certain restrictions of Hoover's bill were retracted.  Leave with pay (30 days per yar) was resumed but reduced to half its previous amount.  (Shortly thereafter the Comptroller-General ruled that all leave accumulated before July 1932 and during the preceding seven months was forfeited.)  The new law also restored the pay differential for Sundays, vacations, and overtime.  On the other hand, the prohibition against administrative promotions (raises) and the filling of vacancies remained in effect. [Memo, Commandant (W.W. Phelps), to The Heads of Departments, Divisions and Offices, 30 March 1933; RG181; NA-NY, NYT, 7 April 1933. BDE, 27 March 1933.  On the second extension, see: Secretary of the Navy, AR, FY 1933; BDE, 5 July 1933.]

As of 6 April 1933, the navy yards returned to the 5.5-day week established in March 1931 but at 85% of their original 48-hour wage-rate.  Yard workers now worked 5.5 days for less money than they had been paid for working a five-day week just previously.  The change in hours was an attempt by the Navy Department to extract maximum advantage from the new law.  Although the new law used 30 June 1928 as the base index it said nothing about hours.  The Navy Department initially thought of making the base from which the pay deduction would be made a forty-hours worked/forty-hours paid week.  This would strip away Saturday's pay, and, adding on the mandated fifteen per cent cut would result in a total pay cut of thirty per cent, as compared to pre-Depression wages (i.e., navy yard employees would work a forty-hour week for thirty-two hours pay).  But implementing a second cut on top of the government's would bring down too much political heat, so instead, the Department returned to the 1931 work-week, thereby abiding by the new law but in real terms receiving an extra half-day of work from their employees at no cost to them (instead of moving to a forty-hours worked/forty-hours paid week). [“Navy Yard Labor,” Memorandum for the Secretary of the Navy, from H.R. Roosevelt, 7 April 1933; RG80; NA-DC. Letter, Controller-General, to Secretary of the Navy, 9 May 1933; Memo, Commandant, to The Heads of Departments, Divisions, and Offices Employing Civilian Personnel, 6 April 1933. Both in RG181; NA-NY.]
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A Third Pay Cut Is Attempted
But the worst was yet to come.  In June 1933, the Department had second thoughts and  unilaterally announced that for reasons of economy and in order to spread work that navy yards would implement a five-day week as of 1 July, in so doing instituting an effective thirty-two percent cut in wages.  The timing of the decree was poor; NRA administrators were then in the process of drawing up the codes, which included a regulation of the length of the work week for each industry, and in deference to this delicate process the planned cutback was cancelled on 23 June.  It was a short postponement.  Near the end of July the government published the NIRA code for the private shipbuilding industry, which mandated a work week of thirty-six hours for commerical contracts and thirty-two for navy contracts.  With this precedent in place, the Department re-instituted the five-day week on 6 August. [Circular Letter, ASN, to AN&MCAC, 1 June 1933. A hand-written note in the margin tells of the order being held in abeyance, per [telegram] Alnavsta 0123-1600, 23 June; a second such note tells of its restoration, per Alnavsta 3 August. Telegram, Secretary of the Navy to Alnavsta, 23 June 1933; reprinted in a Bulletin Board notice of 24 June; Memo, Commandant, to HDDO, 3 August 1933. All in RG181; NA-NY.]

Agitation against the extra deduction had actually begun with the announcement of the first, but then postponed cut.  On 23 June, a group of union leaders met with Navy Department officials and a few Congressional leaders.  According to one labor official, the latter had claimed ignorance as to how the work-week reduction would actually impact on workers' paychecks, and the Department's representatives, while claiming sympathy, begged off on the question until the NIRA shipbuilding code was released, clearly a stalling maneuver in retrospect.  In the meantime, they suggested that calling for a new Wage Board might be helpful for navy yard workers.  This comment startled the labor representatives who found it difficult to believe that the Department did not realize the even deeper wage-reduction potential of such a move.  To the Machinists the idea was a “laugh.”  While publicly the union had to respect the Department’s concerns, its leaders nonetheless advised their members to contact their congressional representatives at once.

Brooklyn Navy Yard workers quickly made their grievance known once the pay cut was instituted, to the press, to Congress, to the President, and to the Navy Department.  Thomas Mahoney, the secretary of the yard's Metal Trades Council, telegraphed Roosevelt to complain about the inappropriateness of a thirty-two per cent cut in pay in light of his statements about recovery.  In June, the AFL's Metal Trades Secretary, John Frey, stepped in and along with the president of the Boilermakers, met with Roosevelt on 22 August.  The two pressed him on the issue, but came away from the meeting only with Roosevelt's comment that the pay cut would be temporary.  The next day two hundred representatives of the BNY's workers sent a resolution condemning the cut to Roosevelt, Swanson, the New York members of the House and Senate, and to AFL president William Green.  Their statement speculated that the continuing political pressure against naval rearmament was degenerating “into [an] attack on [the] wages and employment standards for which organized navy yard workers have long struggled.” [An internal Navy Department chart showed the expected changes in pay.  A first-class mechanic at the New York Yard earning $.92/hour, based on a 48-hour week’s pay of $44.16 would receive a weekly paycheck (including the 3.5% retirement deduction) totaling $29.94, a 32.2% loss ($.748 per hour). See: “Chart, weekly pay in navy yards, submitted by Mr. J.N. Davis,” 16 June 1933; RG80; NA-DC; Also: NYT, 12 August 1933; BDE, 11 August 1933; 13 August 1933; Copy, “Announcement, from A.V. Neblett, President, District #117 [IAM?], to All Local Lodges”, 24 June 1933; RG80; NA-DC. The New York Yard’s Boilermakers quickly  protested the calling of any Wage Board. Letter, Markgraf, Secretary, Lodge #23, Brooklyn, Boilermakers, to William Brunner, House of Representitives, 8 July 1933; RG80; NA-DC. Letter, Frey, Secretary-Treasurer, Metal Trades Department, AFL, to Colonel McIntyre, Secretary to President Roosevelt, 5 June 1933; Letter, Frey, to Hon. Henry L. Roosevelt, ASN, 6 June 1933; All in RG80; NA-DC; NYT, 23 August 1933; 24 August 1933.]

Opposition to the retrenchment erupted nationally.  At the Mare Island Navy Yard in California, for instance, unions and worker organizations protested the loss of the day’s pay as a violation of the NIRA.  Swanson responded by saying that the only other options were furloughs without pay, or discharges.  In replying to one Congressman's inquiry, Henry Roosevelt said the 5.5 day week had been too expensive to retain.  In one week in July it had resulted in a $500,000 over-run in the navy's budget, and the Department had to do something if layoffs were to be minimized. [Lt. Comdr. Lott, A Long Line of Ships: Mare Island’s Century of Naval Activity in California (Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute, 1954).  For the Boston navy yard in this period, see Black, Charlestown Navy Yard, 1890-1973, (National Park Service: Boston, 1988). Letter, H.L. Roosevelt, to Congressman Black, 28 September 1933; RG80; NA-DC.]

Political pressure paid off, and on 2 September, Secretary Swanson announced that President Roosevelt had convinced the Budget Bureau to release $5 million from impounds placed on naval appropriations in general.  The Navy Department then reversed itself in a rather peculiar way.  On 9 September it instituted a bi-weekly schedule in which navy yard employees alternated working a forty-four hour week with a thirty-six hour week, maintaining the half-Saturday bonus while taking every other Monday off.  On this base the fifteen percent deduction was made, in effect establishing the equivalent of a forty-hours worked/forty-hours paid work week. [Memo, Commandant, to HDDO, 5 September 1933; Letter, Acting Secretary of the Navy, to  Commandant, Navy Yard, New York, 24 October 1933; Memo, J.H. West, to Commander Wille, 1 November 1933. All in RG181; NA-NY.  Wages still remained precarious for many lower-paid workers with the rescinding of the cut, in part due to the spreading of work.  In October the navy yard apprentices made public a complaint that due to staggering, after two years, many of them were earning only $9.78 a week. NYT, 6 October 1933; BDE, 3 September 1933.]

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The Issue of Raises
Despite whatever concerns it had about the aggregate wage schedule, the Navy Department still wanted to regain control of the ability to promote individual workers it felt worthy of such consideration, and so continued to pick away at the limitations set by the Economy Act.  One opportunity came during the summer of 1933, in a situation that arose in the Puget Sound Navy Yard.  The preceding October a helper and laborer had been discharged and then reinstated two days later as a machinist and helper machinist thereby "bypassing" the restriction against promotions without presidential approval contained in the Economy Act.  In the course of an audit, the Budget Department challenged this useful ruse of separating supposedly “temporary” workers for a day or so in order to bring them back in a higher grade.  The Secretary appealed to the Comptroller-General arguing that the needs of the service demanded the ability to promote and requested that the Department be allowed to do away with the “discharge” loophole altogether and rely solely on the administrative fiction of the Grade I-IVa workers being “temporary” to permit promotions. [Letter, Secretary of the Navy, to AN&MCAC, 10 August 1933; RG181; NA-NY.]

In response, the Comptroller first ruled the Secretary’s separation strategy as indefensible under the law and prohibited its further use, but then decided partially in the Secretary’s favor on his new proposal.  In a split decision, the Comptroller bowed to the Department’s needs by ruling that the law did not seek to give outsiders an advantage over those employed; therefore it would be lawful and not considered as an administrative promotion for a navy yard to appoint without presidential approval a temporary employee already legally filling a position to a separate and distinct, temporary higher-paid position with different duties.  The other side of the split was that increases within a trade or occupation were still banned.  The Department immediately took advantage of the ruling and ordered the New York Navy Yard to promote first-class apprentices employees who had finished their schooling to the rank of mechanic, a move previously prohibited. [Letters, AND(NYD), to Commandant, Navy Yard, New York, 12 August 1933, 15 August 1933; RG181; NA-NY.]

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Recovery
One year into Roosevelt’s term, in March 1934, Congress took the initiative in rehabilitating the wage package for federal defense workers, when over the President’s veto it passed the Independent Office Appropriations Act for fiscal year 1935.  The relevant section of the bill, called the Thomas Amendment after the Senator who introduced it, pledged the full restoration of wages for government workers whose pay was determined by wage boards to those in place as of 1 June 1932, that is, a forty-eight-hour-week wage.  But in order to stay within the spirit of the NIRA the amendment set the work week at five days and forty hours.  Further it forbade any future Wage Board from announcing a lower schedule, in effect freezing in the 1929 wages for the rest of the decade.  The act retroactively reduced the wage impound to ten percent as of 1 February, and legislated a recouping of another five per cent for the fiscal year starting 1 July 1934.  The law retained the prohibitions against filling vacancies without presidential approval and promoting employees--both now meaningful only for the IVbs, and in-grade promotions for the everyone.  The law did allow for annual promotions (i.e., raises) provided funding was available from savings in “amounts appropriated for personal services.”  The AFL and its unions had lobbied heavily for this legislation and prided themselves for its passing. [Section 21(b), Title II, “Independent Offices Appropriation Act, 1935.” Public No. 141, 73C, 2nd sess., March 28, 1934. NYT, 7 April 1934; Memo, Commandant, to HDDOECP, 2 April 1934; RG181; NA-NY; Secretary of the Navy, AR, FY 1934; Machinists' Monthly Journal, May 1934; Boilermakers' Journal, April 1934.]

As of the second week of April Brooklyn Navy Yard trade workers returned to a five-day work week of forty hours, but this time with forty-eight hours pay.  Just prior to the law coming into effect the Attorney-General alerted the Navy Department to the fact that the act applied only to positions whose wages were set by wage boards, or similar authorities, and therefore did not apply to the IVbs whose salaries were renewed annually by Congress.  To keep their weekly hours at thirty-nine, [their regular schedule being 5 seven-hour days and the half-Saturday], the Saturday half-shift would have to be retained, making for the somewhat odd situation in the navy yards of having only one part of its workforce reporting for work on the weekend morning.  To offset the administrative problems this would cause, the Department in short order unilaterally rearranged the white collars’ hours by instituting a work week of thirty-nine hours in five days: four eight-hours followed by a seven-hour Friday. [Memo, Commandant, to HDDOECP, 6 April 1934; RG181; NA-NY;  NYT, 7 April 1934; 14 April 1934; 15 April 1934.  For a summary of all these changes.]

Needless to say, the IVbs did not agree with the Department’s decision.  In mid-May the draftsmen in the Brooklyn Navy Yard presented a petition of complaint to the Commandant for forwarding to the Secretary, which they claimed was signed by 93% of their force.  Following the example of the trades they felt it only appropriate that they work a thirty-five-hour week at thirty-nine hours pay; if the longer hours were absolutely necessary they should apply only to the CDO staff working on the NIRA projects.  They perhaps did not help their case by further arguing that having to work an extra hour a day would cause their efficiency to drop and so be actually counterproductive.  If the national crisis demanded the sacrifice they would, of course, oblige but they hoped that this would not be the case.  The Commandant duly forwarded the petition on to Washington with his own comments, stating that while he did not have a formal opinion as to the seven-hour day he disapproved the 5½-day work week.  He did want to take the opportunity to let the Department know that, given the seriousness of the Yard’s work load, the three- to six-month lead time necessary to fill a drafting position under civil service regulations, and the dearth of competent drafters on the market, that honoring the draftsmen’s wishes would cause production delays.  Not surprisingly, the Department quickly ruled that opening the Yard on Saturdays was inefficient, and given the demands of the construction schedule, it ordered that the thirty-nine hour, five-day work week be the new norm for the draftsmen, as well as all the IVbs. [Memo, Draftsmen, to Secretary of the Navy, via the Commandant, Navy Yard, New York, 15 May 1934; 1st indorsement, Commandant, to Secretary of the Navy, 15 May 1934; Letter, ASN NYD), to Commandant, Navy Yard, New York, 22 May 1934; All in RG181; NA-NY.]
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The Issue of Raises, Again
The enactment of the fiscal-year 1935 appropriation act gave the Department another opportunity to petition for the right to provide its civilian employees with administrative promotions (raises).  In June 1934 the Navy Secretary asked the Comptroller-General for a clarification of the section of the I.O.A.A., that if he approved in the Department's favor, would permit it to award raises to IVbs, to blue-collars performing clerical work, and to apprentices in general.  The Comptroller agreed with the Navy’s request and ruled that savings gathered from non-impounded vacant jobs, reductions in rank, or leave without pay could be applied to raises on an annual basis, as of each 1 July.  The Department was pleased with this but thought the ruling incomplete.  Swanson wrote back to the Comptroller to remind him that this formula was viable only for the IVbs, whose positions were individually allocated for on an annual basis and whose savings potential therefore were easily computable.  As for the trades, each individual worker’s pay was credited to different budgets (e.g., part construction, part repair), on a pro rata basis.  The proportional allotments varied throughout the year as demand shifted in the shops from construction to repair to manufacture, making local savings near impossible to compute.  The Secretary said that a savings could though be made at the Departmental level and Swanson proposed that the Comptroller permit the Department to establish a “showing of savings” from each appropriation from which wages were drawn and that it monitor each shore station's awarding of raises from that fund.  The Comptroller gave his consent. [Letter, Comptroller-General, to Secretary of the Navy, 9 June 1934; Letter, Acting Secretary of the Navy, to AN&MCAC, 23 June 1934; Letter, C.-G., to the Secretary of the Navy, 2 July 1934. All in RG181; NA-NY.]

BNY management quickly took advantage of the ruling and moved to expand upon it by providing raises for all occupational groups.  Within a few days the Department approved the Yard’s promotion of five first-class apprentices to third-class mechanic status--already an approved action–as well as its readjusting upwards of the pay of fifty-six apprentices of various grades to match their appropriate level of service (i.e., apprentices received a raise for each year of their four-year apprenticeship; by now apprentices had gone two years without a raise).  The Department further declared that from then on apprentice raises would be automatic.  The Yard’s Production Officer went even further by requesting from his staff a list of workers holding minimum and intermediate ratings who they thought deserving of a one-grade increase.  However, by the beginning of July 1934 the Department released its own policy for granting raises to all positions.  After studying the matter, it found that a “showing of savings” could be determined for just a select group, those workers who had been demoted into intermediate or minimum ratings in order not to be discharged for lack of funds.  They would be awarded a one-rating increase.  For workers who had been demoted a grade (e.g., III to II) for the same reason the Department reminded the shore establishments that authorization now existed to re-rate them back to their previous positions provided that local Commanding Officers had the budgetary resources. [Telegram, SECNAV, to NAVY YARD NEW YORK, 5 July 1934; Memo,  Production Officer, to All Masters, 5 July 1934; Letter, Secretary of the Navy, to AN&MCAC, 9 July 1934; Circular Letter, ASN, to AN&MCAC, 28 July 1934. All in RG181; NA-NY.]

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Mid-Decade Personnel Policy Developments
The final major Depression budgetary and administrative restrictions on the navy yards were repealed by 1937.  On 1 April 1935, Congress rescinded the final five-percent impoundment, and in the legislation for the appropriations bill for the 1936 fiscal year, which started on 1 July 1935, Congress let lapse the requirement that Presidential approval be obtained to fill vacant positions.  Navy yards and stations still had to submit job classification forms for new IVb positions but no longer needed to fill out the corresponding justification form.  More importantly for the administration of the shore establishments, Swanson could now drop the administrative contrivance his predecessor had created, that the trades’ jobs were “temporary,” and thus exempted from this requirement.  Grade I-IVa positions were thus restored to the status of “appointments” under the Civil Service Act. [USCSC, History of the Federal Civil Service, 1789 to the Present (Washington: GPO, 1941); Secretary of the Navy, AR, FY 1935; BDE, 1 April 1935. Memo, Commandant, to HDDOECP, 3 July 1935; RG181; NA-NY.]

The flow of work into the navy yards in these years [see next section] plus the recovery in the economy in general allowed for additional modifications to be made to their employees’ working conditions.  In August 1935, the Navy Department returned to the issue of the reorganization of its civilian field service (those working outside of Washington) authorized in the Welch Act of 1928 and postponed by the Brookhart Act of July 1930.  Based on its earlier survey, the Department issued a final classification of the IVbs, to take effect on 1 September 1935.  But for reasons not stated in the files the Secretary modified the ruling so that until such time as the field offices could review the matter that no changes in classification status were to be made unless a person’s duties had changed or a new position created.  The changes were implemented in the summer of 1937. [Memo, Commandant, to HDDO employing Group IV(b) Personnel, 29 August 1935; Memo,  Commandant, to SDDOECP, 28 July 1936; Both in RG181; NA-NY.]

In two acts passed on 14 March 1936 and promulgated into policy by Executive Orders of 9 July, annual and sick leaves were revised favorably for federal workers.  Eleven of the lost days of paid leave per year was restored to federal employees, with the provision that they could be revoked if it was considered necessary to do so.  They now had twenty-six vacation days a year, and while that was not quite the thirty days they had enjoyed before July 1932, they could now accumulate them up to sixty days.  Sick leave regulations were standardized, and now for the first time, granted to the trades, at the rate of 1.25 days per month, cumulative to 90 days. [Circular Letter, Secretary of the Navy, to AN&MCAC, 28 August 1936; Letter, Dunn, to Menkens, Chairman, Shop Assistants, Bryant High School, LIC, 8 October 1936; RG181; NA-NY; USCSC, AR, FY 1936; West, “Short History.”]

Another Hoover Depression remedy fell by the way in July 1937 when the Department, deciding they were no longer necessary, cancelled indefinite and rotating leaves without pay due to lack of funds or work.  Now, if RIFs (reductions in force) were required, workers would be discharged outright, and have to take their chances with the reinstatement list.  Navy yards could still grant furloughs without pay up thirty days, but anything longer needed Departmental approval.  The Secretary said that granting workers indefinite leaves gave false hope when there was no chance of their returning.  Given the great trouble the Department went to to retain those it wanted to keep on the rolls, this decision appears to be a way in which it could dispense with finality those it considered less than efficient workers. [Circular Letter, Secretary of the Navy, to AN&MCAC, 30 June 1937; RG181; NA-NY.]

In September 1937, Grade I laborers were finally incorporated into the civil service by executive order.  Individual shore stations could now bring existing "unclassified" workers into the service upon the passing of a non-competitive test.  But these workers achieved classified status only within Grade I and could not be promoted into a higher grade.  (Grade II helpers could advance to Grade III upon the successful passing of a non-competitive test.)  Once the present laborer lists expired, the Department and Civil Service agreed that all further Grade I positions would be filled only through classified registers. [“Commandant's Order No. 40-37: Noncompetitive promotion of unclassified laborers to classified positions,” 13 September 1937; RG181; NA-NY.]

The general economic revival of the mid-1930s provided the background for repealing section 213 of the Economy Act.  On 26 July 1937, Congress revoked the so-called “marriage clause,” thereby again allowing for spouses to each hold a government job.  Although acknowledged as “controversial,” the legislation had been defended as a means of spreading work during the Depression years.  Those arguing in 1932 that only merit should prevail in hiring and layoff decisions and that the clause would in effect discriminate against married women had been rebuffed by the clause’s proponents who countered that the wording of the section used gender-neutral language.

Section 213 proved something of a failure as to its professed goals.  The Civil Service said that fewer than 2000 employees had been dismissed because of it, but they also inferred that the law probably prevented a large number of people who had spouses already working for the government from seeking government jobs themselves.  In practice, government agencies found the regulation difficult and expensive to administer.  And as many of those released had higher efficiency ratings than those retained, the law was a direct affront to the concept of merit.  Further, it was found that almost all those released earned less than $2000 annually, and that the large majority of those separated were indeed women.  Agitation for repeal had begun as soon as the regulation was enacted and by 1937 the law had become indefensible. [“Commandant's Order No. 19-37: “Report of So-Called Marriage Clause,” to HDDOECP, and to be Posted, 9 August 1937; RG181; NA-NY; USCSC, AR, FY 1937. USCSC, History.  For a full discussion of the continuous tug-of-war between merit and gender assumptions as to employment in the government workplace, see Cathryn L. Claussen, “Gendered Merit: Women and the Merit concept in Federal Employment, 1864-1944,” The American Journal of Legal History 40 (July 1996).]

Conclusion
As Brooklyn Navy Yard employees entered the second term of President Roosevelt's presidency they had recovered and even improved on their lot of five years earlier.  They won a shorter, five-day, forty-hour work week with the older forty-eight-hour-week wage; recouped most of their vacation leave, and made significant advances in sick leave.  Much of this was due to the political pressure that the workers and their unions could apply on Congress.  But the reprieve was also due in part due to the government’s halting of the economic free-fall and the tentative beginnings of growth, easing the need for public parsimony.  For the shipbuilding industry, public and private, economic recovery was also coupled with and spurred on by the will of the administration and its allies in Congress to rebuild the country’s navy (and its merchant marine).  This is the subject of the next section.

Chart:
Hours per Week Worked by Trade Employees of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, 1930-1934
(The workday is eight hours long.)
 

1/30:	6 day week 5½ day week in summer	48 hours pay 48 hours pay
3/31:	5½ day week year round	48 hours pay
7/32:	5 day week	44 hours pay
4/33:	5½ day week	40 hours pay
8/33:	5 day week	32 hours pay
9/33:	5½ day week, alternating with 4½ week (closed Monday)	44 hours pay; 36 hours pay
4/34:	5 day week	48 hours pay legislated, fully restored in 3 5% steps over two years

John R Stobo    ©    September 2004