Public project workers were under force account, not contracted workers. This employment arrangement had it so that workers could not form unions. As stated in an official TERA report, “Relief employment is a form of public welfare aid and not the normal accepted form of employer-employee relationship... There should be no matter of ’demands’ because they are not properly in a position fairly or reasonably to make demands (NYS TERA 1934b: p. 110-11).” However, as of an amendment made to the Emergency Relief Act in 1934, relief workers were eligible for disability allowances—the regular home relief arrangements, medical care as needed, etc—in the instance of work-related injuries through Workmen’s Compensation Laws as a charge to the municipality (Radomski 1947: p. 92, 102, 132; 211-13; NYS TERA 1934b: p. 95-97, 142-44).6
The life of the average relief worker under the TERA consisted of a full time work week, fixed wage rates adjusted to be comparable with the prevailing wages within the worker’s locality, administrative complications, and stigma. Through the TERA’s operation, workers were entitled to twenty-four hours of work per week on manual labor projects. Yet, after a 1934 FERA ruling, the maximum hours work extended to thirty hours per week, and up to
4Should an individual be found guilty of work relief fraud—that is, obtaining funds without working,
misrepresentation of oneself to the Administration to receive work, and/or selling one’s credentials—the worker was to receive no issuance of work relief wages (NYS TERA 1932c: p. 72).
5Welfare bureau local field workers were limited to working on a maximum of 100 cases at a time during
the emergency period.
6Under the TERA’s Works Division, there were 97,449 accidents by mid-1935, about forty of which
resulted in death.
In the case of death or permanent disability, the TERA Disability Claims Division determined an amount of cash allowance, up to $3,500 per case, to issue to the person or their family (Radomski 1947: p. 212). Following the issuance the municipal corporation was legally absolved of any liabilities relating to the damages incurred by relief workers. This saved
3.2. Work relief
128 hours per month (NYS TERA 1934, p. 22-23).7 Workers received a fixed daily or hourly wage that varied throughout the state. This fixed wage rate was designed to be comparable to the prevailing rates received for similar projects within the workers’ localities (NYS TERA 1934, p. 9).8
With so many active, overlapping programs occurring at once, administrative compli- cations were bound to happen. For example, Civil Works Administration (CWA) was a double-edged sword. On one hand, the program’s promise of higher wages and more sub- stantive work projects attracted additional workers to the relief rolls. In this sense, the program improved the prospect of supplying support to the needy. Under the program, based on size of population and total amount of cases, NYS was assigned 396,000 CWA jobs. CWA’s integration into the state relief program arena imposed a bottleneck on payrolls. The work relief administered by the federal program created a crowding the emergency la- bor force. Workers clamored towards federal work relief in anticipation of higher wages and more substantive public projects. While the CWA did attract more workers to the relief rolls, it simultaneously led to pay lags: at times, workers did not receive pay for weeks at a time. In fact, a payroll bottleneck occurring towards the end of 1933 resulted in a “golden flood” by December of the same year. Once the bottleneck broke, workers apparently received their missed payments in a lump-sum just before Christmas.
The CWA’s abrupt dissolution complicated matters further by imposing a transfer of duties. The federal government passed on the obligation of administering work relief to the local relief bureaus. It seems that this shift of paradigm created a barrier to work relief. For example, within its first month the total relief caseload was 321,333—about 42 percent of the total caseload was direct relief and about 58 percent was work relief. This trend reversed following the CWA’s termination by the end of March that year. Between January and March, work relief was the primary recourse to unemployment, leading home relief by roughly 13 percent. Yet, from April on, home relief assistance was more common, leading work relief by about 29 percent.
Despite the ubiquity of home relief aid, the stigma of “government handouts” precluded eligible persons from applying. That is, though the need for relief was present and the re- sources were available, some people simply did not want home relief of any sort. In other words, not every unemployed employable received assistance.9 Instead, they wanted to work.
7According to a 1934 TERA report, the ruling “[d]id not affect the requirement that hours of employment
must be controlled so that earnings will conform to the budget deficit (NYS TERA 1934, p. 23).
8Section 17 of the Relief Law states that “the payment to any unemployed person of any part of such
money in the form of a dole or any other form that for wages is hereby prohibited (NYS Legislature 1931: Sec. 17; NYS TERA 1932c: p. 138-39).
9This suggests that the reported caseload trends are not an accurate measure of unemployment. Likewise,
Figure 3.3: Total direct relief, disaggregated
Source: Author’s calculations—NYS TERA 1937; digitized by author.
Drawing from personal assets—owned property, insurance, and savings—some unemployed workers insisted on self-reliance through the Great Depression (NYC ERB: p. 17). However, the reality was that these personal resources were finite; as time progressed, resources de- clined. With few to no employment opportunities available, the demand for relief was still present. Though the creation of the WPA in 1935 influenced many to apply for work relief through the federal program, it too posed barriers. It increased total caseloads: work relief was the preferred assistance for many people, and certification for home relief certification was a prerequisite to WPA employment (NYC ERB: p. 18). That meant that the WPA would recruit workers from the home relief rolls. The problem with this was turbulence: “when the WPA [l]aid off people, the direct (home) relief load climbed; when WPA hired people, the direct relief load contracted (NYC ERB: p. 16).”