Unemployed Workers Have Lifeline Because of Frances Perkins’ Legacy
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With U.S. unemployment at 8.5 percent in March, the highest rate in 25 years, more than 6 million Americans are making ends meet because of the idea and determination of the nation’s first female Cabinet member, Frances Perkins, a “canny but little-known social worker” who became President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s labor secretary during the Depression.
In a Point of View guest column at the AFL-CIO website, Kirstin Downey, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at The Washington Post, says the vital need for many New Deal programs is especially clear now as we struggle through our current economic crisis.
Downey, author of The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience, says Perkins and Roosevelt “propelled into existence” the unemployment insurance system, part of the package of social safety proposals born in the New Deal, including Social Security. Perkins brought her drive and commitment to the effort, and Roosevelt won the political support that allowed the package to pass, Downey says.
New Perkins Center to Honor ‘Woman Behind New Deal’
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Today, as in 1933, the nation faces serious economic uncertainty. As we struggle to find new answers, we look to the example of Frances Perkins, labor secretary during Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, for inspiration.
Perkins is best known for creating much of the social safety net that protects the elderly, young and those experiencing hard times. She is credited with creating Social Security, unemployment insurance and the system that became Aid to Dependent Children.
She also was behind the Fair Labor Standards Act that set a 40-hour workweek to prevent workers from getting broken down by exhaustion, a minimum wage that ensured they would receive a certain level of compensation, a ban on child labor and creation of overtime pay for workers asked to work long hours.
On April 21, an organization based at her family homestead in Newcastle, Maine, is holding its official Washington, D.C., “coming out party” for the brand-new Frances Perkins Center. Started in January by a group that included Perkins’s grandson, the center aims to continue her legacy by spreading the word about her accomplishments and working to carry on her commitment to social justice.
Frances Perkins: ‘For God, FDR and the Millions of Forgotten…Working Men’
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Great turnout yesterday at a book talk here by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kirstin Downey, who discussed her new biography, The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience.
At least two generations of lawyers, teachers, scholars, government workers and union activists crowded in the AFL-CIO Gompers Room in Washington, D.C., to hear about one of the union movement’s most beloved heroes—Frances Perkins, labor secretary in Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency and the first woman in American history to serve in the Cabinet.
As Downey observed:
The AFL-CIO is a place Frances believed in so much. She wasn’t from the labor movement herself, but she was a very strong supporter of the idea that workers need to organize into unions so they can negotiate better wages and working conditions.
Frances Perkins: The Woman Behind the New Deal
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On March 25, the AFL-CIO will host author Kirstin Downey who will discuss her new book, The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience. The event, at 12:30 p.m., includes a light lunch. Copies of the book will be available for signing. If you’re in the area and can stop by, please RSVP to 202-637-5297. As the review below points out, Perkins’ role in the New Deal has too long been underplayed.
When Frances Perkins stepped into her office as labor secretary, the first-ever woman in a presidential Cabinet, her welcoming committee consisted of this:
A huge cockroach.
It’s a fair guess few had a rougher welcome to a high Washington position than Perkins did in 1933. In a splendid new biography of Perkins, The Woman behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience, Kirsten Downey writes:
Some male Labor Department staffers threatened to resign rather than report to a woman.
