Threatening to quit forced the CWA to abandon its hiring rules for Moses.

Evidence

Moses was confronting the CWA. Its officials were worried themselves about the demoralization of the 68,000 relief workers in the parks. Moses told them that the first requirement for getting those men working on worthwhile projects was to provide them with plans. Blueprints in volume were needed, he said, and they were needed immediately. He must be allowed to hire the best architects and engineers available and he must be allowed to hire them fast. The CWA must forget about its policy of keeping expenditures for plans small to keep as much money as possible for salaries for men in the field. The agency must forget its policy that only unemployed men could be hired so that Moses could hire a good architect even if he was working as a ditch digger or was being kept on by his firm at partial salary. And the agency must drop its rule that no worker could be paid more than thirty dollars per week. The CWA refused: rules were rules, it said. I quit, Moses said. La Guardia hastily intervened. After seven days of haggling, the CWA surrendered. Moses was given permission to hire 600 architects and engineers without regard to present job status, and to pay them up to eighty dollars a week. So that he could hire them as fast as possible, he was even given an emergency allocation to summon them to interviews not by letter but by telegram. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 1625

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘begin construction then threaten to quit’ pattern mirrors ch15’s finding that starting physical work makes authorities unable to stop a project — Moses weaponizes refusal here. — connects to: Moses drove thousands of workers outdoors through the coldest winter in New York history. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 1636