The idea
that nonprofits are a highly sought-after but problematic place to work has
been at the corners of my consciousness for a while, but I had never fully
appreciated the historical continuity of these issues before delving into my
own research. Along the way, I've encountered a variety of materials in which charitable organizations presented negative portrayals of their own
workers due to existing labor disputes or the mere potential that workers might
demand better treatment. Though this is not the main point of my project, it
does present enough interesting connections to the present that I wanted to
draw them out a bit here.
To work for a certain sort of nonprofit is often a way for
one to ally their personal or political commitments with their career-- to work
towards a social dream while also working towards a paycheck. Yet as good as
this sounds-- or as good as the goals of an organization based on helping,
giving, and changing society can be-- the idea of these organizations as the
best possible solutions to social problems has also been challenged. The group
INCITE!, for example, in their collection The
Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, presents critiques of the goals of these organizations as
mere sustainers and beneficiaries of social inequality, and usurpers of the
momentum of grassroots movements.
Moreover, these organizations aren't always good to their
workers, expecting long hours for low pay with a cheerful countenance fueled by
one's passion for the work. This can lead to implicit or explicit inequities in
selection for such positions; for example, a person who doesn't have the family
support to take a very low-paying but status building job, or the recent case
in which a federal program that funds workers in temporary community service
positions engaged
in discriminatory hiring practices, rescinding
offers after demanding disclosure of medical information. Moreover, they can be
actively antagonistic to organizing-- it took
Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains months to
cease fighting
to prevent their workers from organizing.
As the introductory essay to the INCITE! collection hints,
many of the problems with nonprofits' impact and their relationships with
clients are rooted in the origins of the nonprofit industrial complex, which
stem from the tax evasion and wealth accumulation of Gilded Age aristocrats as
well as Progressive Era tendencies toward approaching reform as an
individualized, controlled, and hierarchized project. (Indeed, what American
problem doesn't have links to one or both of these? But I digress.) In my research
on disabled children in the early to mid twentieth century US, I often examine
sources from the perspective of Progressive-minded social workers and
philanthropists, who saw their roles as being improvers of the race, and thus
passed judgment on their clients with abandon in both public and private
records. Linda Gordon's Heroes
of their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence and Pitied But Not Entitled:
Single Mothers and the History of Welfare are
great secondary resources for getting a sense of this rhetoric (these links
offer some interesting reviews of both).
I was
oddly unaware, however, that tensions existed between workers and management
within charitable organizations before the late twentieth century, perhaps due
to my uninformed assumptions that these were largely made up of volunteers. My
trip to Minnesota's Social Welfare History Archive was the first on which
I really noticed the anti-labor sentiment of some of the private charity
organizations.
Several
of these were affiliates of Christian churches or denominations, and relied on
religious sentiment to critique workers' interest in higher pay and better
benefits. The Lutheran Orphan's Friend, for example, reported on recent staff
turnover by narrating a brief cautionary tale: "Word once reached us that one of our workers
ventured the opinion that if we all got together, they could all get more. She
got out. How can such a person serve Christ at a place like this!" The
very idea of organizing with coworkers was not only troublesome to management;
it also indicated that such a person did not understand the mission of the
organization or even Christian charity itself.
Other
organizations dropped the religious emphasis, but kept the anti-organizing
sentiment. The superintendent of Sheltering Arms, a convalescent hospital in Minneapolis, noted that their concern was financial. In an item
slipped at the very end of her Report for September of 1947, Superintendent
Josephine Poehler noted, "Sheltering Arms is included in the Twin City
Hospital Council's meetings regarding the nurses' demands, which will result in
UNION tactics on the part of nurses and higher salaries. We will do everything
possible to keep costs down!" This drama continues throughout several
months of reports, though I have not had the chance to look more deeply into
the outcome of the nurses' bargaining.
There
is, of course, an irony to all of this. Why would people who set out to provide
aid to others have no interest in providing compensation to their own
employees? I see this in part as a weird side effect of the professionalizing
of expertise, particularly medical expertise, in these sorts of institutions.
The charitable model is in some ways built on the idea of free labor, on
volunteerism for no reward other than the satisfaction of doing the right
thing. However, if your organization was going to keep up with the times, you
needed to include professional experts, and many of these trained experts
wouldn't labor for free. Some doctors volunteered their visits, but nurses were
needed consistently, not on a "pop in when you have time" sort of
basis; they were also not earning wages high enough at any position to allow
them to do things on a voluntary basis at other hospitals. Despite this
reality, I suspect that those in charge of these organizations resented the
idea that anyone would not only demand payment, but fair compensation for work
that they felt should be volunteered in the spirit of charity. (This was likely a particularly acute issue at Sheltering Arms, which had spent sixty years as an orphanage before moving into the medical arena in 1943 in response to increasing concern about poliomyelitis.) These qualms are not
dissimilar from modern arguments about one's lack of commitment to a cause or
organization if not willing to work free overtime, be on call at all hours, or
accept wages below the poverty line.
Although
these cases are both from the 1940s, these tensions precede the midcentury era.
Upon seeing the sources discussed above, I reflected anew on a source I'd
already seen, some organizational documents from the Blanche Van Leuven Browne
Hospital-School in Detroit in the 1910s. Blanche Van Leuven Browne, a
polio survivor who opened a home for "crippled children" based on her
own experiences of disability, demanded quite a bit of investment from the
nursing staff she hired. Perhaps the first list item of her employee policy is
the best example: "Absolute, unquestioning loyalty and obedience." Of
course, Browne's position is a bit more complicated-- it's likely that her
demand for respect was in direct response to the difficulty she faced having
her expertise taken seriously, as her qualifications were based in having been
a disabled child rather than a medical professional. I plan on exploring these
tensions in greater detail as my project develops.
These sorts of connections are interesting, of course, but I think they're also a useful thing to highlight in comprehending our own career choices in the modern world. The problems that many of my students will face in choosing their career trajectories, particularly if they want to choose careers in charitable, nonprofit, or other professions associated with "service" or "helping", will have echoes of these tensions. Often historical context reveals to us just how long problems have been happening. This can crush our hopes that things will just get better on their own, but it can also spark us to critique and to action on our own behalf.
Any
suggested readings on the history of labor and philanthropy/charity, the rise
of the
nonprofit,
and the relationship between these things and governmental social welfare
programs? Any themes or incidents seem familiar to you as a volunteer, a
worker, or a client? Let me know in comments!
Thanks to the amazing folks who helped
with sources and encouragement for this post in response to-- you guessed it--
an Internet Ask. Special H/T to Greg Butchello and Caitlin
Dryke for their
source suggestions.
Archival Citations:
Lutheran Orphan's Friend,
Oct. 1941. Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota.
Superintendent's
Report, Sheltering Arms, Sept. 1947 . Board Minutes 1943-47, Box 1. Sheltering Arms Records, 1882-1983, SW-95. Social Welfare History Archives, University of
Minnesota.
Blanche Van Leuven
Browne, "Policy of Van Leuven Browne Regarding Employees 1917 Dec."
Box 1, Folder 8. Blanche Van Leuven Browne Papers, 2017039 Aa 2. Bentley Historical Library, University of
Michigan.
Blog
Note: This will be my last post of the year-- thanks for sticking by me through
2018. If you have favorite posts, items you'd like me to revisit, or themes of
the year that you've noticed, I'd love to hear about them. Otherwise, I'll see
you all in the new year!
