BackTop BackWages for Trade Workers in the Inter-war Era
Background
Wage Boards
Wage Boards in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the 1920s
Wage Cuts Come for Navy Yard Workers
The First Wage Cut: The Economy Act
The Second Wage Cut: Roosevelt's Emergency Budget
Recovery
The Wage Board of 1940
The Last Peacetime Wage Raise
SummaryBackground
The navy yard trades were divided into four grades: I, laborers; II, helpers; III, the trades proper; and IVa, the supervisors. (All other civilian non-trade jobs were in the IVb classification.) Each of the first three grades in turn was divided into three ranks: maximum; intermediate; and minimum. The hourly rate paid for the intermediate rank was five cents per hour less than the maximum's and the rate for the minimum rank ten cents per hour less. Up until December 1926 Leadingmen and Quartermen received 15¢ per hour and 30¢ per hour respectively over the maximum rate; after that date the differential was increased to 18 and 36 cents.During the 1920s navy yard trade workers worked a six-day, forty-eight hour week, with paid Saturday afternoons off during the summer. Beginning in 1921 the government began deducting 3.5% of their employees' wages and salaries to cover the premiums for their newly-legislated pension plans. [Income tax then, for the few who qualified, was not automatically withheld.]
Wage Boards
The Navy Department used wage boards to establish wages for its trade workers. (Salaries for white-collar workers, the IVbs, were set for each grade and classification by Congress.) The act establishing the procedure for the setting of wages for navy yard workers is one of the oldest American labor laws in existence. Approved on 16 July 1862, the legislation provided that“the hours of labor and the rate of wages of the employees in the navy yards shall conform, as nearly as is consistent with the public interest, with those of private establishments in the immediate vicinity of the respective yards, to be determined by the commandants of the navy yards, subject to the approval and revision of the Secretary of the Navy.”This law was amended in 1864 to require that each yard's commandant convene a local wage board that investigated local wages, developed a recommended schedule that factored in the "public interest" and pass the suggestions on to Washington where a national wage board, appointed by the Secretary, made the final set of recommendations for the Secretary to use in determining the wage schedules. These boards met annually except during World War I, when they were suspended, or when economic conditions in the years immediately after the war necessitated more frequent schedule changes (see chart for dates of Board decisions in the years following the war’s end). [McPherson and Watts, “Fixing Wages and Salaries.” ]Wage Boards in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the 1920s
In the 1920s wage boards in the Brooklyn Navy Yard worked in the following manner. The process began in July when,given the word by the Navy Department, the Commandant appointed the yard's wage board, a group of officers and a civilian recorder. They first met to draw up a list of about 600 local companies to survey, some two dozen of which they would eventually visit personally. Elected representatives from the trades (grouped into twenty-seven related groups) could comment on the list and suggest additions or deletions. The companies chosen were not just maritime-related but included any metropolitan business employing trades similar to those employed in the navy yard, with certain major exceptions to be mentioned later. The surveying took about seven weeks and another three weeks was then spent summarizing the results, making recommendations, and listening to comments on the proposed schedule from the workers' representatives. The final report, along with transcripts of the workers' remarks was sent to the commandant for his comments, and then the Yard forwarded the whole package to the Navy Department in Washington. There, the department's wage board, which included an officer, a civilian naval employee (representing the public), and a representative from the AFL's Metal Trades Department sat to hear further testimony, collate the data, and pass on their recommendations to the Secretary of the Navy, who made the final decision as to what wages best suited the public interest. [The extensive research, testimony, and correspondence is in the yard's files. RG181; NA-NY. Also, see: McPherson and Watts, “Fixing Wages”; Spero, Government as Employer.]In their presentations to the BNY wage board different trades made different arguments, although as a whole they generally argued that the prevailing-rate clause of the law should be the controlling interest. This for the most part meant contending that the highly-paid building trades should be considered as the "comparable" trades. At this time the private shipyards in the metropolitan area were open shops, and as might be expected in presenting their data the delegates ignored all but the most-well paid of their workers. However, the Navy Department refused to consider organized building trade jobs as comparable work and thereby excluded their wage data.
Here is a sampling of some of the worker's representatives' arguments, drawn from the wage board hearings from 1927, which met to recommend a new wage schedule for 1928.
The sheetmetal shop countered the navy's proposed 98¢ with $1.50, specifically referring to the higher wages of their colleagues in the metropolitan area. The shop's workers claimed that the superior quality of their work not only demanded a higher pay scale but that by paying higher wages workers would be encouraged to stay on in the Yard. The plumbers, desiring $1.25 to $1.50 as opposed to the navy's proposed 98¢, not only brought to the board's attention the higher rates of city plumbers but added that while those outside could specialize, that Yard plumbers were expected to be competent in all aspects of the plumbing trade. Further, they thought their overtime pay of an extra five cents an hour was piddling compared to that of unionized plumbers who received the standard time-and-a-half on weekdays and double-time for Sundays and holidays. The boilermakers, offered 93¢, took a different tack. They acknowledged the navy's often-raised point that they got paid vacations and holidays while their private-sector colleagues did not, but nevertheless they still wanted a raise to $1.00 per hour as well as the outside scale for overtime. [Transcripts, Committees representing Sheetmetal Workers; Plumbers, Pipefitters, Pipefitters' helpers; Boilermakers, [their] helpers, Shipfitters, [their] helpers, Welders, gas, Welders, electric, Flange turners, [their] helpers, Anglesmiths, Caulkers and chippers, iron, Drillers, Riveters, Punchers and shearers, and Loftsmen; "Wage Board, 1927"; RG 181; NA-NY.]
The machinists brought in a member from the international staff [IAM] to help with their presentation, a large part of which attacked the data collected from the local marine shops favored by the navy for their low pay. They questioned the veracity of the data offered by the shops, maintaining that the “average” figure for these shops in reality was a starting figure. They wanted wages from print shops in the City entered and let the naval officers know that some machinists in the area received up to double-time-and-a-half for overtime. A minimum of $1.25 was appropriate instead of the proffered 93¢.
The blacksmiths complained that the wage officials used data from shops employing immigrant labor that exploited the workers' lack of English so as to pay them low wages. The molders protested vigorously that the shops they were being compared to did not perform comparable work. The painters too pointed to their comrades outside, who made up to $1.50 an hour, a rate more appropriate than the 93¢ being offered them. The painters' representative, Ralph Penn, admitted that they worked at the navy yard “of our free will,” and that “in a way we are here established in a certain group that is maintained,” but echoing the sheetmetal workers he contended it was in the Yard's better interests to attract and keep good workers. [Transcripts, Committees representing Blacksmiths and Blacksmiths' helpers; Molders, Foundry chippers, Sandblasters, Cupola tenders, Melters, Molder helpers; Painters; WB, 1927; RG 181; NA-NY.]
When the electricians strenuously made their argument for getting the local prevailing wage, asking for $1.50 as opposed to the Board's recommended 98¢, they seemed to finally have hit a sore nerve for Captain Parsons of the Public Works Division, the chair of the local board, who refused to give his opinion on the matter saying, “I do not think. I am here to hear what you have to say.” He said his board's duty was only to collect data with the public interest in mind in order to establish a “trend of wages” upon which the Navy Department made the final decisions. When pushed further by the electricians, Parsons agreed that “no trade in the Navy Yard [received the] same as [was] paid outside” and that it was not the Board's duty to recommend such. [Transcripts, Committees representing Machinists, Toolmakers, Die sinkers, plus a brief submitted by P. Engel for the machinists; Electricians and Electric Cranemen; WB, 1927; RG 181, NA-NY.]
As it had in the past, the Yard's wage board took the position that the public interest clause of the law trumped the prevailing-wage one, and recommended raises of five cents or more for many positions but nothing close to the $1.50-plus scale that city trades received. The Board defended its position saying that navy yard wages had to compensate for the 44 days per year that navy civilian workers were paid for but did not work: thirty days of vacation; seven federal holidays; and the 14 Saturday summer half-holidays. However, if we, the readers, add on the fourteen percent “loss” that these days represent to navy yard workers' wages they still did not approach parity with the wages of the city's organized workers. [“Wage Board Hearings, 1929," enclosing “Extract, from memorandum for the Secretary of the Navy, prepared by Bureaus Construction and Repair and Engineering,” March 1927; “Work Load - Assignment of Work, vol.1”; RG80; NA-DC.]
It was a similar situation in 1929 when the BNY Wage Board began to consider recommendations for the 1930 wage schedule. Not pleased with the award of only a handful of mostly penny-per-hour raises in 1929, shop representatives again asked for parity with New York City's unionized workers. The machinists and shipfitters requested an hourly rate of $1.00, while some of the Yard's building trades, like the plumbers, wanted rates comparable to those of their brethren working under contract and asked for up to $1.65 an hour. [On the workers' feelings toward the awards for 1929, see New York Times, 3 January 1929 and as to their requests for 1930 see Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 13 October 1929.]
Some representative union wage scales for New York City:The Board's recommended schedule, with comments from the Commandant, was forwarded to the Department for final disposition. Before this could occur, the stock market crashed and President Hoover called for businesses not to lower their wages in response. But earnings had already begun to fall and fearing he might be obligated to follow suit if he adhered to the prevailing-wage clause of the wage law, Navy Secretary Adams instead, citing the public-interest clause of the law, announced in November that the Department would continue the 1929 schedule for 1930. Navy yard workers and their unions disagreed with the decision but there was not much anyone could do given the circumstances. (For the recommendations made for 1929 and 1930 and the actual schedule decided upon by the Secretary for 1929 see this chart.) [Letter, SN (C.F. Adams), to AN&MCAC, June 1929; RG181; NA-NY; Letter, SN, to AN&MCAC, November 1929; RG181; NA-NY.]
Building trades average, $1.352/hour;
Carpenters, $1.50/hour, 44 hours/week;
Painters, $1.50/hour, 40 hours/week;
Boilermakers, $1.65/hour, 40 hours/week;
Machinist (building trades), $1.50/week, 40 hours/week;
Bookkeeper; stenographer; typist, $25-35/week, 39 hours/week.
[United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, Union Scales of Wages and Hours of Labor, May 15, 1929.]Wage Boards did not meet again until 1940. For eleven years the 1929 wage schedule remained as the base salary for blue-collar workers in the country's navy yards. Adams' subsequent decisions to continue the freeze throughout the rest of Hoover's term was a bow to the political reality that it was difficult for the government to cut its employees's wages at the outset of such a dramatic economic downturn, but his decisions did turn the Department's historical interpretation of the wage law on its head. For once, the public-interest clause was used in order to discriminate in favor of navy yard workers, instead of its customary use by the Navy as a justification to pay them lower than unionized but higher than non-organized workers. One navy file memo noted that in 1932 the average hourly wage of per diems in the navy yards was 24.95 cents per hour, or 44.5%, higher than for the same ratings in private plants in their vicinity, a fact that continually angered non-unionized, commercial shipbuilders in search of work. Needless to say, once the magnitude of the of the Depression was recognized by the public, organized labor actively campaigned for the continuation of the 1929 wage schedule throughout the following decade. [File Memo, “Comparison of Wages of Per Diem Employees, U.S. Navy vs. Commercial Firms,” n.a., n.d. [at least the end of 1932]; RG80; NA-DC.]
Navy Yard workers received another break from the Hoover administration, when in March 1931 in an effort to spread work, Congress established the paid Saturday half-holiday year-round for the civil service. This meant that workers in the Brooklyn Navy Yard worked a 44-hour week but received 48 hours pay. [Letters, ASN, to AN&MCAC, March 1931; April 1931; RG181; NA-NY.]
Wage Cuts Come for Navy Yard Workers
Over the course of the Hoover administion there were repeated calls, especially by businesses, to reconvene wage boards, but it never proved politically feasible to do so. But wages cuts would come for navy yard workers in a different way. They were not the only federal employees whose wages and benefits budget-minded legislators wanted to cut. Near the end of Hoover's term legisation was passed doing just this, and the cuts were amplified further in the first year of the Roosevelt administration.The First Wage Cut: The Economy Act
In the waning days of the 1932 fiscal year [then the annual budget ran from July 1-June 30] Congress and Hoover completed long months of negotiations over the appropriations bill for federal employees for the upcoming year, coming to an agreement only on 30 June 1932. The result, labeled the “Economy Act,” imposed harsh strictures on all government workers. For the navy yards it was the first time since the end of the world war that wage changes were imposed unilaterally on the blue-collar trades. [“Making appropriations for the Legislative Branch of the Government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1933, and for other purposes.” Public, No. 212, 30 June 1932. For a discussion of the possible savings of the Act for the Navy, see: Memo for the files, n.a., n.d. (perhaps March 1932); “Civil Employees”; RG80; NA-DC.]The act was long and complex. Its major provision decreed a one-month furlough without pay for government employees. For institutions where this would not be practical, like navy yards, workers were placed on a five-day work week. BNY employees lost Saturday mornings, but as they had been receiving pay for Saturday afternoons the net result was that they now received 44 hours of pay for working 40 hours: the equivalent of a one-twelfth wage cut. Among its other monetary penalties, all thirty days of leave with pay (vacation) was canceled for fiscal year 1933, including that already accrued but not taken, and leave was thereafter reduced to fifteen days per year. Additional pay for Sunday, holiday and overtime work was revoked and the night shift differential halved. [“Economy Act, 30 June 1932."]
The Second Wage Cut: Roosevelt's Emergency Budget
Federal employees may well have felt relief on 4 March, 1933, the day of Franklin Roosevelt's inaugeration. But among the very first issues the new Congress, called into immediate emergency session, concerned itself with was the wage schedule of the government employees. It took Congress just two weeks, to 20 March, to produce a budget bill. The new law was controversial in that it cut veterans’ pensions drastically. Lesser publicized was its Title II which increased the pay cut of all government employees for six months, civilian and military to a total of fifteen per cent of their June 1932. [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. Also, see: Leuchtenberg, Roosevelt and the New Deal; Kenneth Sydney Davis, FDR, the New Deal Years; McElvaine, Great Depression.]The reduction took effect on 1 April 1933 and Roosevelt later extended it for a second six-month period. However, certain restrictions of the previous bill were retracted. Leave with pay was resumed but reduced to half its previous amount, and the pay differential for Sundays, vacations, and overtime was restored. 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. [Memo, Commandant, to The Heads of Departments, Divisions and Offices, March 1933; RG181; NA-NY; NYT, 7 April 1933; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 27 March 1933. On the second extension, see: Secretary of the Navy, Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1933; BDE, 5 July 1933.]
Not content with a fifteen percent wage cut, the Department saw an opportunity to turn the new law to its own advantage. Navy officials claimed that the act allowed them to set the base week, from which the wage reductions were being made, at forty hours, instead of the forty-eight hour week then in effect. This would result in navy yard workers having an effective thirty-two percent wage reduction, as compared to pre-Depression wages (they would work a forty-hour week for thirty-two hours pay). In spite of the political heat implementing such a scheme would bring down upon them, in June 1933 the Department unilaterally announced that for reasons of economy and in order to spread work that navy yards would return to a five-day week as of 1 July, and in so doing instituting a one-third cut in wages. The timing of the decree was poor; NRA administrators were then drawing up their 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 NIRA published its code for the private shipbuilding industry, which included a work week of from thirty-six hours for private contracts and thirty-two for Navy-contracted work. With this precedent the Department re-instituted the five-day week on 6 August. [“Navy Yard Labor,” Memorandum for the Secretary of the Navy, from H.R. Roosevelt, April 1933; “Secretary of the Navy”; RG80; NA-DC. Letter, Controller-General, to SN, May 1933; Memo, Commandant (W.W. Phelps), to Heads of Departments, Divisions, and Offices Employing Civilian Personnel, April 1933; RG181; NA-NY. Circular Letter, ASN, to AN&MCAC, June 1933. A hand-written note in the margin tells of the order being held in abeyance. A second such note tells of its restoration. Telegram, SNavy to Alnavsta, June 1933; reprinted in a Bulletin Board; Memo, Commandant (Yates Stirling, jr), to HDDO, August 1933; RG181; NA-NY.]
Brooklyn Navy Yard workers and their colleagues in other yards quickly made their grievances known, to the press, to Congress, the President, and the Navy Department. Thomas Mahoney, the secretary of the Brooklyn Metal Trades Council [the navy yard workers' labor federation], telegraphed Roosevelt to complain about the inappropriateness of a thirty-two per cent cut in pay in light of his statements about recovery. In August the AFL's Metal Trades Secretary, John Frey, and the president of the Boilermakers union met with the president to press him on the issue, but they came away from the meeting only with Roosevelt's comment that the cut would be temporary. The next day two hundred representatives of the BNY's workers sent a resolution of condemnation to Roosevelt, SN 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.” [Folder “Civil Employees"; 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; "Work Load - Assignment of Work, vol.1"; RG80; NA-DC. Letter, Frey, Secretary-Treasurer, MTD, to Colonel M.H. McIntyre, Secretary to President Roosevelt, June 1933; Letter, Frey, to HL Roosevelt, ASN, June 1933; “Work Load - Assignment of Work, vol.1”; All in: RG80; NA-DC; NYT, 23 August 1933, 24 August 1933.]
Opposition to the retrenchments erupted nationally. At the Mare Island Navy Yard in California, for instance, unions and worker organizations protested the loss of pay as a violation of the NIRA. Secretary Swanson replied that the only other options were furloughs without pay and discharges. In replying to one Representative, Henry Roosevelt said the 5.5 day week was too expensive to retain. In one week in July it had resulted in a $500,000 over-run in the navy's budget, and something had to be done if layoffs were to be minimized. But the Assistant Secretary also tried to sidetrack the issue by claiming that navy yard workers had lost only the Saturday half-holiday, and now worked forty hours for a straight forty hours of pay. [Lott, A Long Line of Ships; For the Boston Navy Yard in this period, see Frederick R. Black, Charlestown Navy Yard, 1890-1973. Letter, H.L. Roosevelt, to Congressman Black, September 1933; “Work Load - Assignment of Work”; RG80; NA-DC.]
Such arguments did not placate the aggrieved workers and their allies, and within a month their pressure paid off. 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, returning to the half-Saturdays but closing on alternate Mondays. On this base the fifteen percent was made, in effect establishing the equivalent of a forty-hours worked/forty-hours paid work week (one day lost equals approximately fifteen percent of a 1929 paycheck). [Memo, Commandant (Yates Stirling, jr), to HDDO, September 1933; Letter, Acting SN, to Commandant, Navy Yard, New York, October 1933; Memo, J.H. West, to Commander F.J. Wille, November 1933. All in: RG181; NA-NY.]
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. In it was a section that pledged the full restoration of the wages [for those federal workers whose wages were set through wage boards] in place as of 1 June 1932, that is, forty-eight hours' worth, but in order to stay within the spirit of the NIRA the legislation 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 impound to ten percent as of 1 February 1934, and legislated a recouping of another five per cent for the fiscal year starting 1 July. The AFL and its unions had lobbied heavily for this legislation and prided themselves for its passing. The new wage schedule was implemented during the the second week of April 1934 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. A year later, on 1 April 1935, Congress rescinded the final five-percent impoundment. [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 (S.H.R. Doyle, Acting), to HDDOECP, April 1934; RG181; NA-NY; SN, Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1934. Machinists' Monthly Journal, May 1934; Boilermakers' Journal, April 1934. Memo, Commandant, to HDDOECP, April 1934; RG181; NA-NY; U.S.C.S.C., History of the Federal Civil Service, 1789 to the Present; SN, Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1935.]As Brooklyn Navy Yard employees entered the summer of 1935 they had recovered and even improved on their lot of five years earlier. They had lost half of their vacation time, but in its place they won a shorter work week of five days, earning the same wages they had made previously for working a six-day week. Belonging to the politically strongest group of unions that included federal employees obviously played a primary role in this recovery of the fortunes of navy yard workers.
TopThe Wage Board of 1940
Under the Republican administrations after World War I the private shipbuilding industry as well as the navy yards had all suffered from a lack of government-sponsored ship construction, commercial or warship, the private industries almost going under completely. President Roosevelt reversed this trend and with his Congressional allies began a new era of construction for the country's warfleet and merchant marine. The coming war and then its outbreak in Europe in September 1939 greatly accelerated ship construction in the United States and by 1940 shipbuilding labor was becoming scarce. This new growth also provided the opportunity for a new CIO union, the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipworkers of America, to organize in the private yards with a fair measure of success, and from 1940 on the Metal Trades Department signed contracts with many of the new emergency shipyards on the West Coast.As a result, as the Forties opened it had become clear that private-shipyard wages had risen to levels rivaling those of the public yards, if not surpassing them in some trades, and agitation to reconvene local Wage Boards began among navy yard workers. In mid-1939 the Assistant Secretary declared, that given the trends, he expected that by early 1940 private-sector wages for trades as a whole would rise enough to justify calling for new wage boards. [Circular Letter, ASN(SED), to AN&MCAC, June 1939; copied in: Commandant's Instructions No. 44-39, to HDDOeCP, June 1939; Circular Letter, Acting SN, AN&MCAC, August 1939; RG181; NA-NY. For a comparison of wages in navy yards and private shipyards in 1936, see “Earnings and Hours in Private Shipyards and Navy Yards” Monthly Labor Review (November 1938); “Annual Earnings in Navy and Private Shipyards” Monthly Labor Review (December 1938).]
On 13 January 1940, Secretary Edison announced that local wage boards were to convene on 15 February to “investigate and recommend rates of wages for the Naval and Marine Corps activities within the purview of the Board,” and his order gave them twelve weeks to finish their work and forward their recommendations to the Navy Department. Each navy yard was also required to post its report on its shop bulletin boards. [Circular Letter, SN, to AN&MCAC, January 1940; RG181; NA-NY.]
BNY Commandant Woodward instituted the wage board at his Yard on 7 February 1940 and opened up hearings for the different trade groupings wishing to submit wage data. Now that the navy yards worked a forty-hour week for what was once forty-eight hours of wages, the base hourly wage rates for the 1940 wage board were adjusted upwards appropriately and exactly, many of the new rates being calculated to tenths of a cent if need be. The New York Wage Board conducted about 575 investigations and collected wage data from private shipyards in the Third Naval District, collectively employing over 11,000 people. As they did before in the 1920s the naval officials refused to collect wage figures from building and construction industries, public utility companies, and specialty firms [host to strong unions], saying that they did not perform comparable work, and that they would use data from them only if they could not find data for a trade from other firms. By mid-May 1940, the board finished its task and on 24 May the Commandant shipped the material together with his report to the Secretary of the Navy. His recommended wage schedule was quite modest. (For selected wage rates of private businesses collected by the BNY Wage Board, see this chart.) [“Wage Board - Selection of Committees for Hearings Before,” Commandant's Notice, to Civilian Employees, Classification Groups I, II, III, IV(a) of the Naval Establishment at: Navy Yard, NY, [et al], February 1940; “Report of Wage Board,” from the Commandant, to the SN, May 1940. Both inRG181; NA-NY.]
Labor organizations aggressively pursued a generous raise at the national wage board hearings that began in June 1940. This time around, the national board had two labor representatives sitting on it, the secretary-treasurer of the MTD for the AFL and the president of the United Federal Workers, for the CIO. Spokesmen from both federations asked for increases of up to twenty percent for the 100,000 workers then working in the country's eleven navy yards. N. P. Alifas, president of IAM's federal-worker District 44, reminded the Board that his workers took wage reductions in the first half of the 1930s, and Marion Hedges of the IBEW asked that electricians' wages be pegged to those of construction electrical workers working in the vicinity of each navy yard. On the CIO's side, Henry Rhine, national organizer for the United Federal Workers of America, said yard employees had spoken to him of the general wage increases in private industries in the past few years, and Philip Van Gelder of the IUMSWA told the board that wages in private shipyards in the Philadelphia-Camden area now exceeded those in navy yards. [NYT, 14 June 1940, 14.]
The national wage board took testimony over the summer and fall of 1940, drew up its report, and submitted it to the Secretary of the Navy. On 7 November, Commandant Woodward released the Department's schedule for the New York Navy Yard, to take effect on 18 November 1940. The results were seen by many workers as a poor joke [see chart]. While a bit more generous than the New York Wage Board in the number of raises awarded, the actual amounts given by the Secretary were minuscule, often just tenths of one cent per hour, the basic principle seemingly being to round up to the nearest full cent higher those wages which because of the recalculation had been figured in tenths of a cent. The Brooklyn Eagle noted the pattern at once and even the Manager, Captain Broshek admitted that such seemed to be the case. Nationally, aggregate pay raises worth $1 million were distributed to about 15,000 eligible navy yard workers [about on average an extra $1.25 per week]. [“Schedule of Wages Groups I, II, III, IV(a),” Commandant's Instructions No. 62-40, to HDDO, November 1940; RG181; NA-NY. BE, 7 November 1940.]
Complaints came in furiously and not only from New York, as the Secretary was miserly with all his charges. Both labor representatives, having signed on to the wage schedule, resigned from their union positions. In early December, James Forrestal, the Under Secretary of the Navy, perhaps made matters worse when he responded to James Skelton, Chairman of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Wage Committee, saying rather patronizingly that the Department had received “expressions of satisfaction,” as well as criticism. He reminded Skelton that navy yard employees had been protected from Depression wage fluctuations [omitting the 1932-34 period] and that the review by the two wage boards [local and national] appeared to have confirmed the “view” that general wages in commercial plants still lagged behind those of naval stations. And besides, a civilian and representatives from the AFL and CIO had given their approval. [Letter James Forrestal, Under Secretary of the Navy, to John Skelton, Chairman, Brooklyn Navy Yard Wage Committee, Navy Yard, Brooklyn, NY, December 1940; RG181; NA-NY; Black, Charlestown Navy Yard.]
Such throw-away comments did not stifle labor disbelief in the verisimilitude of the new Schedule. In response, the Secretary called hearings in Washington in early 1941 to allow all interested labor organizations and navy yard committees to express themselves on the matter. But after listening and considering what the plaintiffs had to say, Secretary Knox ruled against them on 16 April 1941 claiming that they had given him no justification to modify their pay rates. [Letter, SN Knox, to Commandants, all navy yards [et al.], Labor Organizations Concerned, April 1941; RG181; NA-NY.]
TopThe Last Peace-time Wage Raise
This was not the end of it, and as mid-1941 approached, the issue of navy yard wages became intertwined with those for private shipyards. By late 1940 it had become obvious to the federal government that difficulties in the coordination of supplies to, and labor migration among, private shipyards had become severe enough to justify its intervention. Repeating the procedure of the previous war, Sidney Hillman set up a Shipbuilding Stabilization Committee on 27 November 1940, consisting of representatives of the OPM, the Navy, the Maritime Commission, the shipbuilding industry, and AFL and CIO officials, to begin negotiations to establish four zonal wage standards. The goal of the Navy Department and the Maritime Commission, the sponsor of transport-ship building, was to set a maximum rate of pay and overtime on cost-plus-fee contracts (above which private companies would have to pay out of their own pockets), and to set a specific escalator clause for wages in fixed-price contracts. In a bow to political realities, secretary Knox conceded that once the Zone Stabilization Conference finished its business, navy civilian wages would be reviewed. [Despatch, ASN Ralph Bard, and Emory S. Lane, Chairman, Maritime Commission, to all East Coast shipyards, all Gulf shipyards, all Great Lakes shipyards, copy to Commandants Naval Districts, June 1941. Letter, SN, to AN&MCAC, June 1941; copied in: “Wages of Employees in the Naval Establishment,” Commandant's Notice, to HDDO, June 1941; RG181; NA-NY. Frederic C. Lane, Ships for Victory: A History of Shipbuilding under the U.S. Maritime Commission in World War II .]The East Coast Zone Stabilization committee completed its work on 18 June 1941, establishing a base pay for mechanics of $1.12 an hour, a quite generous hike of up to twelve cents an hour for many IUMSWA-contracted-shipyard workers. This was a cent or two higher than the maximum wage for some Brooklyn Navy Yard employees such as the machinists and painters, and as promised, the Department reviewed navy yard wages in light of the results and released a new wage schedule in mid-October, to take effect on 31 October 1941. While the inflation rate had begun to rise in 1941 (4.76% to 1.20% the year before), the new Wage Schedule reflected the awards given to the private sector shipworkers, giving some significant raises to civilian workers, in some positions up to ten per cent. To discourage labor migration, the Navy Department equalized the pay rates in each Grade III trade in all east coast navy yards (Portsmouth, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Norfolk, and Charleston, plus the Newport torpedo station). For helpers, whose services were more easily replaced, the Department allowed some regional variance in their rates, permitting the Norfolk and Charleston yards to pay ten cents an hour less for helpers than the Northern yards paid. The regional differences for laborers' wages were quite pronounced: the unskilled workers receiving 78 cents an hour in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Portsmouth, and Newport, 72 cents in Washington, 62 cents in Norfolk, and a lowly 54 cents for the yard in South Carolina, one-third less the rate paid in the North (a gap larger than the earlier NIRA regional minimum wages). In the Brooklyn Navy Yard, laborers received a six-cent raise and the apprentices as well as most of the helpers received significant pay boosts. The trades also gained nicely by the new schedule although some of the building-trades, like the electricians and plumbers, did not advance. The leveling among navy yards in the new wage schedule also meant that some yards' trades received higher raises than others; the Philadelphia Navy Yard whose waeg schedule was lower than Brooklyn's received proportionally higher raises than their colleagues to the north of them. [Lane, Ships for Victory; Letter, ASN, to AN&MCAC in the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth Naval Districts and on the Potomac and Severn Rivers, October 1941. Abridged in: “Amendment to Current Schedule of Wages,” Commandant's Instructions no. 62-40, sup. 4, to HDDO, October 1941; RG181; NA-NY. The inflation figures are from “What was the Inflation Rate Then?”; EH.Net Economic History Services; http://www.eh.net/hmit. See chart for wage figures.]
The Navy Department adjusted navy yard pay according to agreements made by the Zone Stabilization Committee once more in June 1942, boosting the average mechanic's rate from $1.18 an hour to $1.20. After President Roosevelt instituted a wage freeze in October 1942, the Navy resorted to using wage surveys conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics or themselves, to determine wages, subject to approval of the National War Labor Board. The Department promulgated two schedules based on this method, in November 1943 and October 1944. [NYT, 1 July 1942; Letter ASN, to All Naval, Marine Corps and Coast Guard Activities concerned, June 1942; RG181; NA-NY; “Determination of Wage Rates for Mechanical and Laboring Positions in the Federal Service,” Monthly Labor Review (November 1944); McPherson and Watts, “Fixing Wages and Salaries of Navy Civilian Employees in Shore Establishments, 1862-1945,” (Navy Department, Records Administration Division, May 1945).]
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January 1, 1929: Wage board schedule for the year implemented;
BNY trade workers put in a 6-day, 48-hours week;
In summer, a 5.5 day, 44-hours week, with full pay.November 1929: Wage boards suspended. March 1931: Saturday half-holiday instituted year-round. July 1932: Economy Act: 5-day, 40-hour week, with 44 hours pay. April 1933: 5.5-day, 44-hours week, with 40 hours pay; 15% cut in total. June 1933: 5-day week announced for 7/1;
Suspended end of 6/33; put in effect 8/33;
40-hour week, with 32 hours pay.September 1933: Alternate 5.5/4.5 day weeks; every other Monday closed;
40 hours week on average, with 40 hours pay.April 1934: 5-day, 40-hour week, with 48 hours pay;
15% impound rescinded in 3 five per cent yearly steps.November 1940: First Wage board schedule implemented since 1929. October 1941: Wage Schedule implemented unilaterally based on private-shipyard rates.
John R Stobo © May 2004