On page 118 and 119, we find that the “Blacks were major victims of the NRA. The labor codes were drawn up by craft unions that excluded blacks as members and did everything they could to promote the interest of white workers and to subvert the interest of blacks, who were seen as competition."
It is noted that “Since large numbers of black workers were unskilled, they couldn’t compete on the basis of skills. Their best hope was to offer to work at a lower rate and get on-the job –experience, which would increase skills and their ability to compete.”
We are told that “Some 500,000 black workers were estimated to have lost their jobs because of the NRA minimum wage law."
Mr. Powell goes on to tell us that:
“Moreover, by sanctioning compulsory unionism, the NRA labor codes effectively excluded blacks from many jobs. As the NAACP’s publication the “Crisis” reported in November 1934: ‘Daily the problem of what to do about union labor or even about a chance to work, confronts the Negro workers of the country…. Seeking to avail itself of the powers granted under section 7A of the NRA, union labor strategy seems to be to form a union in a government, strike to obtain the right to bargain with the employees as the sole representative of labor, and then to close the union to black workers, effectively cutting them off from employment.” It is noted that “Out of a reported 2.25 million union members in 1933, only about 2 percent were blacks.”
Mr. Powell points out on pages 228 and 229 that:
The Democratic Congress of Roosevelt administration “passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, and it became law on June 14, 1938. It was based on the minimum wage provisions of the National Industrial Recovery Act."
Mr. Powell points out that “The Fair Labor Standards Act was devastating for the South.” And further more “Because a disproportionate number of black workers were in the south, they were the principal losers from this minimum wage law.”
He continues with Professor David E. Berstein’s comments that:
“‘The disemployment effects of the FLSA… were mainly felt by unskilled African American workers in the South, who were most likely to work in jobs that paid less than the government-imposed minimum wage. The Labor Department reported in 1938 that between thirty thousand and fifty thousand workers, mostly southern African Americans, lost their jobs because of the minimum wage within two weeks of the Fair Labor Standards Act’s imposition…. African Americans in the tobacco industry were particularly hard hit. In Wilson, North Carolina, for example, machines replaced two thousand African American tobacco stemmers in 1939."
On pages 254 and 255 with information on Social Security Mr. Powell informs us that:
“A 1996 RAND Corporation study similarly reported that an individual’s life span is a primary factory determining the total amount of Social Security benefits. Average Social Security benefits are lower for blacks than for whites because blacks don’t live as long as whites. On average, Social Security transfers about $10,000 from blacks to whites.”
“Blacks have fared the worst with Social Security. The rate of return for black males has been negative for the past four decades, since 1960. Robert Woodson, president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, asked: “What would be the public reaction if I proposed a plan to collect monthly contributions from working black men and women, then transferred a good portion of that money to older white women? Or what would happen if I tried to sell a retirement investment plan to 24-year-old black American males that would end up paying each of them $13,000 less in benefits than they paid into my plan? Most likely, if I were successful in conning people into these schemes, I would be arrested, tried and convicted of fraud.”
Also see The first look at a block vote!
You can contact us by e-mail at wetrack@windstream.net - We would like to hear from you.
Have a nice day.
No comments:
Post a Comment