What was flexible new deal

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If whether they have done so is not observable, the economy has multiple equilibria supported by … Expand. View 3 excerpts, references background. Work to be done? Welfare reform from Blair to Brown. In government, Labour can, with some justification, take credit for getting Britain working and cutting poverty. But … Expand. View 1 excerpt, references background. This article focuses on the contracting-out of Public Employments Services.

Quasi-markets promise to deliver more efficient, effective and de-bureaucratised employment services. By comparing … Expand. In this speech, Professor Stephen Nickell, asks at why wage inflation has remained stable despite the fact that unemployment is at its lowest level for a generation. The answer is that the level of … Expand. Home Welfare Welfare reform. Request an accessible format. If you use assistive technology such as a screen reader and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email accessible.

Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use. Brexit Check what you need to do. Explore the topic Welfare reform. Is this page useful? The Civil Works Administration and later the more extensive Works Progress Administration put millions of unemployed to work on activities ranging from road-building to painting murals on government buildings.

Of all the New Deal reform and relief programs, the most important and durable was Social Security, and without Frances Perkins it might never have been enacted.

Long a proponent of public old-age insurance, Perkins had only accepted her post at the Labor Department on the condition that FDR would back her in seeking this goal. She led a campaign to convince the nation that a pension system would both be humanitarian and also help prevent future depressions. By public opinion was thoroughly in favor of the idea. So was the Congress, goaded by fear of demagogues such as Francis Townsend who were mobilizing millions of despairing elderly citizens with plans for large, guaranteed federal pensions.

The Social Security Act passed in and provided direct aid for the destitute elderly and a pension program for many, but far from all, workers. It also provided federal funding for state-operated unemployment insurance programs, as well as aid for the handicapped and for mothers with dependent children. An independent Social Security Board ran the entire system.

Although Perkins' activities and accomplishments ranged far outside the Department, there was a great deal of importance happening there too. The Wagner-Peyser Act of established the U. Employment Service, building on the existing service and adding more resources and so that the USES could maintain, in cooperation with the states, an effective nation-wide system of employment offices.

The USES also provided placement and recruitment for programs for the unemployed, including those on unemployment insurance under the Social Security Act.

One of the important economic recovery provisions of the NRA set minimum wages and maximum hours per week. Even before the Supreme Court decision overturning the NRA, Perkins had the Department draft a bill setting wage and hour standards for work on federal contracts. With this bill and a related one up her sleeve, she told FDR not to worry about the NRA because she had two bills "locked in the lower left-hand drawer of my desk against an emergency.

The Walsh-Healey Act eventually had a major effect on wages and hours for contract workers, but its main immediate impact was to prepare the way for much broader wage and hour legislation. The second bill in Perkins' desk was a "fair labor standards" bill providing for the setting of minimum wages and maximum work hours for most industrial workers. FDR was fearful that the conservative Supreme Court would overturn such a far-reaching bill if enacted, as it had the NRA, and he embarked on his famous attempt to "pack" the Court.

The Congress refused to go along, so he had to leave the fair labor standards bill to its fate. The more restricted Walsh-Healey Act had passed fairly easily, but Congress balked at this broader legislation. Administered by the Department of Labor, the Act set a minimum wage of 25 cents per hour and a maximum workweek of 40 hours to be phased in by for most workers in manufacturing.

The hour week has not changed in 50 years, but the wage level has risen steadily and the coverage has broadened to include most salaried workers. One of the projects Perkins discussed with Roosevelt before accepting her appointment was to have the Department of Labor help state governments deal with labor problems. In July she held at the Department a very successful conference of 16 state minimum wage boards some of the states had minimum wage laws long before the Federal Government.

Spurred by this experience, the next year she held a two-day conference on state labor legislation at which 39 states were represented. State officials in attendance were gratified that the U. Department of Labor was showing interest in their problems. They called on Perkins to make the labor legislation conferences an annual event. She did so and participated actively in them every year until she left office. The conferences continued under Labor Department auspices for another ten years, by which time they had largely accomplished their goal of improving and standardizing state labor laws and administration.

To institutionalize the work she was trying to accomplish with these conferences, Perkins created the Division of Labor Standards later redesignated a bureau in as a service agency and informational clearinghouse for state governments and other federal agencies. Its goal was to promote, through voluntary means, improved conditions of work. The Division offered many services in addition to helping the states deal with administrative problems. It offered training for factory inspectors.

It attracted national attention to the area of workers' health with a series of conferences on silicosis. This wide-spread lung disease had been dramatized by the "Gauley Bridge Disaster" in which hundreds of tunnel workers died from breathing silica-filled air. The Division also worked with unions, whose support was needed in passing labor legislation in the States. The unions around the country received a tremendous boost from Washington when the National Labor Relations Act of , known as the Wagner Act, gave federal sanction to the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively.

It established an independent National Labor Relations Board to oversee representation elections and adjudicate labor disputes. Not an architect of the Act, Perkins sought unsuccessfully to have it administered by the Department. Nevertheless, from the start the Department played an important role in making the law work.