For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State

by Jennifer Klein

The New Deal placed security at the center of American political and economic life by establishing an explicit partnership between the state, economy, and citizens. In America, unlike anywhere else in the world, most people depend overwhelmingly on private health insurance and employee benefits. The astounding rise of this phenomenon from before World War II, however, has been largely overlooked. In this powerful history of the American reliance on employment-based benefits, Jennifer Klein examines the interwoven politics of social provision and labor relations from the 1910s to the 1960s. Through a narrative that connects the commercial life insurance industry, the politics of Social Security, organized labor's quest for economic security, and the evolution of modern health insurance, she shows how the firm-centered welfare system emerged. Moreover, the imperatives of industrial relations, Klein argues, shaped public and private social security.

Looking closely at unions and communities, Klein uncovers the wide range of alternative, community-based health plans that had begun to germinate in the 1930s and 1940s but that eventually succumbed to commercial health insurance and pensions. She also illuminates the contests to define "security"--job security, health security, and old age security--following World War II.

"For All These Rights" traces the fate of the New Deal emphasis on social entitlement as the private sector competed with and emulated Roosevelt's Social Security program. Through the story of struggles over health security and old age security, social rights and the welfare state, it traces the fate of New Deal liberalism--as a set of ideas about the state, security, and labor rights--in the 1950s, the 1960s, and beyond.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Labor, American History, School, Economics

392 pages, Paperback

First published May 6, 2003

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jennifer Klein analyzes the events and decisions that have led to our current welfare and health care system. Klein argues that our current system is a public-private hybrid. To demonstrate this Klein begins with an analysis of group insurance before moving on to an in-depth discussion of welfare capitalism’s response to the Great Depression and Social Security. These chapters are crucial because they illustrate the ways in which movements emerged in response to the Depression that challenged welfare capitalism as well as the maneuvering of welfare capitalists and insurers that allowed them to rebrand themselves and notions of “security” in the face of greater state intervention. Klein’s later chapters call attention to the various “welfare experiments” of reformers, policy makers, and unions during the New Deal. These efforts were later supplanted by the federal government which took on a greater role in the World War II years only to dial back in the post war years in favor of collective bargaining with employers. For All These Rights becomes increasingly dense with each chapter; however, the books central argument remains salient.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-researched (and very dense) history of how the US ended up in a place where aspects of welfare that are guaranteed publicly as a right in other countries are relegated to the private sector. Klein looks at how social movements and mass politics influenced the trajectory of public and private welfare policies--and how large corporations, medical societies, and insurance companies organized to preserve power and privilege. She traces the discourse around "security" in these fights and whether "security" was something workers were owed -- and if so, by whom. She also makes clear that the private delivery of benefits did not win because of any superior efficiency, reliability, or other virtue, but simply as a result of economic power. He book spans the rise of private pension plans (and how narrowed in scope so many early ones were), the creation of Social Security and other New Deal benefits, and the fights for health insurance (and to design the whole sector in a way that would be able to control costs and be responsive to needs).

[Tommy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only gets three stars bc she cooked in the epilogue:

“Employers have to break their social contract with employees if they are to compete. The New Capitalism equals the End of History.”

Otherwise, honestly a bit of a nightmare to read for several reasons

(Gutted for class)

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

an excellent mongraph, but reminds me why i don't read academic history books much these days. soooo dense.