Princeton: Princeton University Press, Notes and index. Welfare capitalism represents one of those marginal academic side-shows that nonetheless has surprising staying power. At various times historians have shown interest in ways that firms have distinguished themselves by being model employers.
The heads of these firms, unlike their stereotypical colleagues, do not believe in the classical theory of labor supply in which workers present themselves in an infinite supply at the market price. Instead, they understand that workers are valuable commodities who become even more valuable once they receive some form of on- the-job training.
In the conventional historiography, the hey-day of this form of welfare capitalism comes in the s, when businessmen held a sort of moral sway over the nation. Then, in the s, welfare capitalism breaks down in the face of the collapse of the labor market that we call the depression.
As the price of labor falls and the demand for products declines, benevolence no longer pays substantial dividends. Government steps in to offer a sort of alternative form of welfare capitalism. Through legislation the government mandates that workers have the right to bargain through representatives of their own choosing and workers also have the right to pensions and unemployment compensation that are supplied by the government, rather than the company.
Historians have argued about the role of welfare capitalists or corporate liberals in the creation of the twin peaks of New Deal regulation: the Wagner Act and the Social Security Act.
Whatever the results of this argument, the outcome remains the same. In the s, the torch gets passed from welfare capitalism to a new world in which both unions and the government, often acting in tandem, have a substantial presence. Welfare capitalism is a subject for the first third of the twentieth century and not more recent times. Of course, that conventional view is just plain wrong. We know, for example, that there was a corporate welfare revival in the postwar era and that welfare capitalism remains alive and well today.
In the latest round of health reform, for example, the Clinton administration, just like the Nixon administration before it, tried to create a plan that would mandate health insurance coverage. Clinton had no intention of having the government become the primary supplier of health care.
Prior to about the United States had the best public school system in the world. By about mid-century, American government expenditures on public schooling were as large as expenditures on all other welfare state programs combined.
The high school participation rates for American youth were twice what they were for European youth. The funny thing about demands for expanded educational opportunity is that these demands often grow in the same soil as social democracy. When we search for the origins of the one, we often end up digging around the roots of the other. Historians of education have pointed to the error that historians of welfare have made when they have characterized the American commitment to public education as a sign of liberal or middle-class values, not working-class demands.
Texas anti-segregation campaign, UT Center for American History. Admittedly, this has happened less often in the US than elsewhere. But is has occurred in the United States in specific historical circumstances, something that Ira Katznelson and Margaret Weir observe in their book, Schooling for All.
Although they have sometimes faced off against working-class whites trying to restrict access to education and opportunity to whites by denying education to blacks. African Americans demanded equal access to schooling and quality education for black youth both before and after the famous Brown v.
Board of Education de-segregation cases of the mid twentieth century. Oddly enough then, the white working class as well as African Americans and others undoubtedly as well enjoy a sort of latent familiarity with social democracy.
It comes to them through their familiarity with schooling as a potential source of opportunity and, in a more remote sense, with welfare capitalism as one source of public schooling. In combination, McCormick programs were intended to blur the distinction between worker and manager, to bind employees to the firm, and most emphatically, to deter unionization. The peak of enthusiasm for welfare capitalism was in the s, and in that era the Western Electric Company was widely respected as a model employer.
Its executives concluded that settlement houses did not fully meet the needs of female employees at its Hawthorne Works. So it offered baseball , tennis , bowling , and golf , all of which were very popular with both office and factory women, as were holiday festivals and community dances.
Dozens of firms aimed similar programs at young working women. Though the Great Depression restricted the growth of welfare capitalism and transformed its character, it did not destroy it.
Stock purchase and profit sharing declined, as did certain recreational and educational programs. In , company unions became an illegal practice. Key Points In the United States, the mid-twentieth century marked the height of business provisions for employees, including benefits such as more generous retirement packages and health care. Not all companies provided good benefits, so workers appealed to government, which imposed minimum labor standards e.
Welfare capitalism still operates in the United States, where the government ensures minimum labor standards; some companies continue to offer benefits. Key Terms Progressive Era : The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of social activism and political reform that flourished from the s to the s. It refers to the practice of businesses providing welfare-like services to employees. Provided by : Boundless.
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