Civil service merit reform directly threatened patronage employees’ livelihoods
Evidence
The downgrading of seniority in Moses’ system would mean that these city employees would lose a large advantage—in many cases their only advantage—over bright young outsiders trying for their jobs. The elimination of unnecessary jobs would mean that some of them would be out of work entirely. Moses’ insistence on demotion for men who failed to score high enough on new examinations to qualify for the jobs they presently held would have the most far-reaching effects of all. Men who had run their ward boss’s errands for years in return for advancement up the civil service ladder now came to realize that under Moses’ system the rewards for which they had waited so long might be snatched from them; in fact, for many of them, “might” was only a euphemism; they knew all too well what their qualifications were and how they would make out on honestly run examinations. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 336
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Political patronage threatened to erode civil service stability and guarantees; Patronage appointments to top civil service posts risked politicizing the service permanently — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 806; A merit-based pay plan ten thousand civil servants would perceive as a massive demotion — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 338 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Moses’ merit system threatened the careers of decades of loyal patronage workers
#corroborates(0.95) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 336 - Political patronage threatened to erode civil service stability and guarantees
#corroborates(0.85) - A merit-based pay plan ten thousand civil servants would perceive as a massive demotion
#exemplifies(0.82) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 338 - Patronage appointments to top civil service posts risked politicizing the service permanently
#expands(0.78) — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 806