Perhaps less important, but nonetheless significant, are the opportunities for employment on the construction projects and the standards set by the TVA in handling its large labor force. Workers are employed on the basis of special tests developed in cooperation with the United States Civil Service Commission. They are entitled to organize according to their own preferences, and labor and management work together on employee problems. Since construction work is necessarily temporary, the TVA's job training program not only contributes to work efficiency but allows employees to prepare themselves for other work when the TVA job is finished. All possible assistance is given to families forced to move from the reservoir areas.
Records indicate that, in general, they have improved their lot.
In moving these people, due regard was paid to their natural feelings, for in many cases they left homes occupied by their families for more than a century. The story is told of one family who resisted removal because it would entail extinguishing the hearth fire that had been burning continuously for three generations. The TVA cut the Gordian knot by keeping the fire going while it moved the family to its new home. In its program for flood and navigation control, for land reclamation, and for cheap electric light and power the TVA is substituting order and design for haphazard, unplanned, and unintegrated development. Through its social and educational activities it is bringing to this region a consciousness of its own rich natural and human resources.