Reconstructing Disability

Progressive reformers such as Crystal Eastman hoped that the creation of social insurance programs, funded by risk-based employer taxes, would compensate injured workers without the need for costly and uncertain litigation, while many employers favored a new administrative system that would reduce the risk of expensive court findings in favor of workers. Jennings begins with AFPH's advocacy for people with disabilities during the Second World War, leveraging the labor shortages created by the general mobilization into military service to seek expansion of the federal-state vocational rehabilitation (VR) program, promote the employment of workers with disabilities, and improve supports for disabled veterans. In one respect this was a struggle over bureaucratic turf between the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the Federal Security Administration (FSA), which included the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation (OVR). AFPH favored a more universal focus for disability policy. urging an expansion of eligibility for public disability pensions, then limited to disabled veterans, to anyone whose jmpairment prevented their employment in the general labor market.