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184 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 1 (1936)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0184 and id is 1 raw text is: A National Labor Policy By FRANCEs PERKINS LABOR policy in a democracy is not a program conceived by a govern- ment. It is a program of action which the people who earn their living as wage earners and those who employ them in a profit-making enterprise must work out together in a society which develops naturally out of the work that they do and the life that they lead. The function of government is to serve as a stimulating agent to facilitate the for- mation of such a policy, which will be just and fair to all the people and in the line of human progress. Hand in hand with the growth of our institutions, a labor policy is develop- ing. It is in somewhat more than a rudimentary stage. It is, like all so- cial institutions, a growing, living thing, subject to such change and re- vision as the economic and political consciousness of the wage earning and employing groups, the experiences of life, and a growing sense of justness make possible. It will be realistic, flexible, practical, and based upon the habits of people and the prevailing necessities of production and distribu- tion, rather than upon predetermined conceptions of human relationships. ELEMENTS OF LABOR POLICY Among the first items in this growing labor policy of the American Govern- ment are the following: 1. That the Government ought to do everything in its power to establish minimum basic standards for labor, below which competition should not be permitted to force standards of health, wages, or hours; 2. That the Government ought to use its influence to bring about ar- rangements which will make possible peaceful settlements of controversies and relieve labor of the necessity of re- sorting to strikes to secure equitable conditions and the right to be heard; 3. That the ideal of Government should be, through legislation and through co5peration between employ- ers and workers, to make every job the best that the human mind can devise as to physical conditions, human rela- tions, and wages; 4. That Government should encour- age such organization and development of wage earners as will give status and stability to labor as a recognized im- portant group of citizens having a con- tribution to make to economic and po- litical thought and to the cultural life of the community; 5. That Government ought to ar- range that labor play its part in the study and development of any eco- nomic policies for the future of the United States; and, 6. That the Government should encourage mutuality between labor and employers in the improvement of production and in the development in both groups of a philosophy of self- government in the public interest. If labor's rights are defined by law and by government, then certain obliga- tions will of course be expected of wage earners, and it is for the public interest that those obligations should be de- fined by labor itself, and that such discipline as is necessary should be self- imposed and not imposed from without. This is the basis of all professional codes of ethics in modern society. There are many signs at the present time, with the growth and the recogni- tion of the importance and significance 1

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