Adjusting Our Lives

Dr. Frank’s articles appear in this space every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Even before the great, depression, the increasing severity of anti-Jewish discrimination in office employment forced upon the attention of Jewish communal workers the question of exclusively Jewish employment agencies. Many Jewish leaders were convinced that part of the discrimination was due to a prejudiced attitude of managers and their subordinates in commercial employment agencies, Steps were even undertaken to study the legal aspects of the situation.

The economic depression has sharply intensified the handicap against the Jewish workers and office employees. Racial prejudice on the part of personnel directors, coupled with the anti-Semitism of certain employment agencies, have made the un-American economic discrimination a burning problem of American-Jewish life. In 1930 and 1931 a few employment agencies in New York displayed placards reading, “Applications not accepted from Jews.” These signs were removed after protest.

ATTITUDES OF AGENCIES

The Bureau of Jewish Social Research undertook, in 1929, a study of twenty-three commercial agencies as regards anti-Jewish discrimination. Eight of these were very discouraging and emphasized the futility of registering since Jewish girls stood no chance of being placed. Several other did register them, but pointed out to the difficulties in placing.

All in all, in ten out of twenty-three agencies the Jewish girls had no chance of being placed, while in seven others they had a very little chance, and only at six they had as good a chance as if they were not Jewish.

According to some of the employment agencies, such discrimination is found among Jewish professional and business people as well as among non-Jews, and the agencies must meet the demands of employers.

CASE FOR JEWISH AGENCIES

While various Jewish welfare agencies for youth, such as the Young Men’s and Women’s Hebrew Associations, have now for many years carried on placement work among young men and women, there have appeared in recent times recommendations to put this branch of welfare work upon a broader foundation. Several leading social workers have suggested that Jewish welfare federations should consider the establishment of employment exchanges as an integral part of their community program, and as a means to concentrate upon the problem of anti-Semitic discrimination.

Jewish employees, according to this current of thought, face unemployment not only as workers, but as Jews, particularly when better-paid work is involved. Therefore, much more individual attention is needed for this new type of involuntary unemployed Jew.

The Jewish social work agency, the argument runs, being in touch with both the Jewish job-giver and the Jewish job-seeker, is surely in a much better position for service than the usual employment agency. Truth to tell, the latter is hardly equipped in America to cope with the ordinary day-to-day problem of unemployment for even non-Jewish wage-earners. Again, cooperation and experiences of such experiments as the employment exchanges of the men’s clothing workers should stand in good stead during the first stages of a purely Jewish employment service.

A CONTROVERSIAL ISSUE

On the other hand, various authoritative students of American-Jewish community problems, among whom Dr. J. M. Rubinow is foremost, are not at all enthusiastic about the plan of organizing special Jewish employment bureaus, particularly under the auspices of Jewish social service agencies. “The case worker in his praiseworthy anxiety to achieve an individual adjustment,” says Dr. Rubinow, “may lend all his efforts in that direction, as perhaps he rightly should, but he often does it without due regard to the more remote and obscure but inevitable social consequences.”

Furthermore, a job at any cost, no matter what the conditions of employment, may suit the particular individuals economic and psychiatric situation, but proper relations between social and economic classes cannot be established in that way. Placement of a few handicapped is one thing, and proper organization of the labor market as a whole quite another.

This view, then, takes notice of the new trend toward far greater consolidation and not subdivision of the all-important machinery of bringing job and man together. In the long run, a special Jewish employment office may only facilitate anti-Jewish discrimination, and may cause sub-standard conditions of employment for Jewish labor.

AN EXPERT OPINION

The argument for purely Jewish employment agencies is vulnerable to refutation in the opinion also of a leading non-Jewish specialist in placement problems. We refer to Dr. Mary H. S. Hayes, director of the Vocational Service for Juniors, a free, non-sectarian placement organization located in the East Side of New York.

Hers is the following reasoning. No employer who thinks he does not want Jewish help will pay any attention to a Jewish agency. An agency having applicants of all races, upon whose judgment the employer has come to rely, sometimes can persuade him however to make a trial of some particularly suitable applicant, even though Jewish.

As a matter of fact, sheer anti-Semitism on the part of the employment agency is a rare and casual occurrence. In most cases, their anti-Jewish attitude is caused not by personal prejudice but by the bias of their customers and clients, the employers of labor. Thus, a shifting of responsibility from agency to employer, and from the employer further on to the public usually takes place. The whole situation, one may say, is a far-flung and most vicious circle.

Dr. Frank’s articles appear in this space every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.