National War Labor Board (1942–1945)

The strength of the American labor movement gained during the 1880s with the creation of the American Federation of Labor (AFL); weakened during the 1920s due to overall prosperity and opposition from the National Association of Manufacturers and similar industry groups; and then regained strength again in the 1930s during the Great Depression with the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).[2] The CIO, helped by the passage of legislation such as the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the Wagner Act of 1935, attained a strong position in industries such as steel, oil, rubber, and automobiles.[3]

Normally, the United States did not engage in forms of wage and price controls except under wartime conditions (the first peacetime attempts would not occur until the early 1960s and especially in 1971).[4] Following the start of World War II in Europe in 1939, even though the United States was not yet itself at war, the country began an economic mobilization; it was considered as almost obvious that the government would have to put into place some kind of program to prevent or bring to an immediate end strikes, if the mobilization was to be effective.[5]

Under the Roosevelt administration, several federal entities began overseeing industrial production and industrial relations, the last of bodies being the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board for goods production and the National Defense Mediation Board for labor issues, but none of them were especially effective.[6] In particular, the Mediation Board had proved unable to resolve a dispute in summer 1941 at the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in New Jersey,[7] and then had become inconsequential following a November 1941 dispute involving the CIO and certain coal mines that were owned by steel companies.[8][9] That dispute ended with the CIO dropping out of the board.[10]

Poster put out by the War Production Board, emphasizing the need for labor and industry to cooperate during the war

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States entering the war in December 1941, there was an immediate desire for stronger agencies to be in place.[11] In January 1942, Roosevelt established the War Production Board.[11] The danger of strikes occurring during wartime was not just a direct military cost but also a public outrage over the sight of, as one study puts it, "workers' laying down tools [while] men are shouldering arms on battle fronts, the possible danger to the security of loved ones".[5] A major labor-management conference took place in December 1941, and while labor and industry representatives could not agree on everything, they did agree on a no-strike, no-lockout pledge for the duration of the war and on having some kind of mediation board, the structure of which the Roosevelt administration would largely be able to determine.[12]

The members of the War Labor Board, as photographed before their initial meeting on January 16, 1942; Chairman Davis is front row center

So the National War Labor Board was established by Roosevelt under Executive Order 9017, issued on January 12, 1942.[13] Roosevelt said that "the national interest demands that there shall be no interruption of any work which contributes to the effective prosecution of the war".[8] The NWLB was given the authority to "finally determine" any labor dispute which threatened to interrupt war production, and to stabilize union wages and benefits during the war.[14] The United States Congress had no role in the creation of the board.[15] The executive order which created the NWLB was imprecise in delineating its jurisdictional responsibilities, a lacuna which later would lead to some bureaucratic frictions.[16] In any case, the creation of the board was an above-the-fold story in the next day's New York Times.[8]

The twelve-member board had a tripartite structure, with four members from each of industry, labor, and the public.[14] The chairman of the new board was William Hammatt Davis, a patent attorney from New York; he had been chair of the National Defense Mediation Board, which was abolished as part of Roosevelt's action.[8] Roosevelt had confidence in Davis,[17] and as Davis had established a reputation for being impartial during this prior stint, neither labor nor industry protested his being named to head the new entity.[18]

Dispute cases came to the War Labor Board from the U.S. Secretary of Labor, usually after the United States Conciliation Service, which was part of that labor department, had been unable to bring the disagreement to a settlement.[19] But the board repeatedly stated that its arbitration procedures were not supposed to be replacing collective bargaining,[20] and indeed, the board insisted that collective bargaining have been fully tried before it would take on a dispute, including use of the Conciliation Service.[19] Overall, about 27 percent of cases received by the Conciliation Service ended up being sent to the War Labor Board.[21]

Once a dispute was accepted by the War Labor Board, it was mandated to see it through to a binding settlement,[22] whether by mediation, voluntary arbitration, or imposed arbitration.[23] This gave the board more power than either its immediate predecessor National Defense Mediation Board or its First World War namesake.[24]

Despite some parties urging that the War Labor Board adopt a broad set of principles to guide is decisions, it did not, instead resolving issues on more of a case-by-case basis.[25] George W. Taylor, the vice chair of the board, later made the case that such a course was the only realistic choice, given the urgencies of the war effort and the wide gulf between labor and industry perspectives.[26]

In the face of the no-strike pledge agreed to by union leaders, there were a number of wildcat strikes during the war.[27] Indeed, the number increased during 1943, which led to the passage in June of that year of the War Labor Disputes Act.[28] This gave the War Labor Board even more power.[24]

While in legal terms the War Labor Board did not have the power to go to the court system in order force compliance to its rulings, it could go to the White House, which in the ultimate case had the power to seize factories and plants.[29] This threat tended to be more effective against violations by management than against violations by labor.[30] In practice, the board established what one scholar has called a "common law of industrial relations", built up over a series of decisions and precedents from the regional boards and panels and commissions and considered as precedents or not by the national board.[31] Penalties for giving wage increases higher than NWLB regulations permitted could involve disallowing those payments as allowed costs for tax calculations or for contracting bids.[32] Penalties for unions that were flaunting regulations could include removal of overtime or shift premium benefits or removal of union security provisions.[33]

In discussions on the board, both labor and industry representatives tended to use strong language and arguments, although it was often for the sake of effect.[34] The econmist Dexter Merriam Keezer, who was a public member of the national board in the later stages of the war, noted that the board's business was conducted in a "socially rugged manner" in which "it was commonplace to have charges ranging from those of deceitfulness, venality, and vulgar avarice to the relatively mild accusation that one was being willfully and stubbornly obtuse tossed around the Board and accented by shouting and table pounding." Nevertheless, Keezer said, such accusations were the custom in American labor relations and were rarely meant to be taken personally.[35]

The National War Labor Board had the effect of displacing the pre-war National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as the main focus of federal labor relations for the duration of the war.[14] Although Roosevelt instructed the NWLB not to intrude on jurisdiction exercised by the NLRB, the War Labor Board did not honor this request. [14] From 1942 to 1945, the NRLB chairman, Harry A. Millis, tried to secure a jurisdictional agreement with the NWLB, but these discussions proved fruitless and Millis broke them off near the conclusion of the war.[14]

Throughout the course of the war, the NWLB received a total of 20,692 dispute cases.[21] Some 17,650 of these cases were resolved in some fashion by the board, in actions that affected over 12 million workers.[21] In addition, they received over 450,000 requests for voluntary wage or salary changes, of which almost all were decided on by the board.[36] These voluntary cases ended up affecting around 26 million workers.[36]

Cover of "Index to Dispute Cases: April 1944 – October 1945", a document prepared in the disputes division of Region V to cover the final period of the war and its aftermath

Following passage of the Stabilization Act of 1942, President Roosevelt created, via Executive Order 9250 issued on on October 3, 1942, the Office of Economic Stabilization, whose purpose was to establish a means to control inflation through stricter regulations on prices and wage and salary increases.[64] In particular, the order stated that as a general rule, "No increases in wage rates, granted as a result of voluntary agreement, collective bargaining, conciliation, arbitration, or otherwise, and no decreases in wage rates, shall be authorized unless notice of such increases or decreases shall have been filed with the National War Labor Board, and unless the National War Labor Board has approved such increases or decreases."[64]

This meant that voluntary cases of wage increase proposals were now coming in, in addition to dispute cases.[19] This greatly expanded the workload of the National War Labor Board, and it soon became clear the existing, centralized operation in Washington, D.C. would not be sufficient to the task.[19] At first, the board created a system of regional entities;[65] but as these bodies had advisory capabilities but little final authority, this arrangement proved insufficient as well.[19] So in January 1943, the board announced the establishment of twelve Regional War Labor Boards, which were tripartitite replicas of the national board and which could determine settlements for both voluntary and dispute cases.[66][19]

Each regional board had four divisions: a wage stabilization division, a disputes division, a legal division, and a division of administrative management.[19] The regional boards were responsible for much of the enforcement of national board decisions.[67]

The regions that handled the most cases during the war were those located in Chicago, New York, and Cleveland, each of which dealt with over 1,000 cases.[68] The large majority of decisions were reached not by the national board but by the regional boards, or the panels and commissions.[36]

† Southern New Jersey was transferred from Region II to III shortly after creation[19]
‡ Territorial War Labor Board for Hawaii, established June 1944[69]

Table uses traditional abbreviations for states.

The national board was further decentralized starting in late 1942, when it established special tripartite commissions and panels to deal with specific industries on a national, rather than regional, basis.[19] These entities included the following:[70][71][19]

The difference between the two kinds of entities was that commissions were empowered to make final decisions, subject only to possible review by the national board, whereas panels could only make recommendations to the national board or regional boards.[19] The commissions that handled the most cases during the war were those for West Coast Lumber, Trucking, and Tool and Die.[68]

Separately, disputes or voluntary wage increase cases involving the building and construction industry were not handled by the NWLB at all, but instead were referred to the Wage Adjustment Board for the Building Industry, and entity that was part of the Department of Labor.[19] This was because construction work is fundamentally different regarding industrial relations, in that the sites of work are constantly changing, each particular job has a short duration, and workers typically do not remain with contractors on an extended basis.[72] There was some overlap in regulations and administrative procedures between the Wage Adjustment Board and the NWLB, however, with some conflicts arising between the two bodies as a result.[73]

Finally, wage cases involving federal employees were typically handled by those particular federal agencies, who would periodically submit reports of their decisions to the NWLB.[19]

Jane P. Metzger, a review officer for the War Labor Board, sitting at her desk at the Region V offices in Cleveland, Ohio, in late 1944 or 1945. Metzger would subsequently engage in scholarly research regarding the social and public impact of the post-war wave of strikes.[74]

By 1944, the War Labor Board had over 2,400 employees.[75] The people hired were for the professional staff were mostly economists or those in other social sciences.[76] The NWLB also heavily raided the National Labor Relations Board for staff, in the process significantly hindering the other agency's operations.[77]

Many male staff members of the war agency boards ended up getting drafted into military service.[14] The board had difficulty in recruiting professional staff for that reason, and also because there were few people with experience in industrial relations or with wage stabilization.[78] The economist Jean Trepp McKelvey worked for the War Labor Board as a hearing officer and arbitrator;[79] working in Region II, she later recalled the experience there as enabling her to learn much about the world of contracts and collective bargaining.[76] Following the war's conclusion, she became a founding faculty member of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University and a pioneer in women acting as arbitrators.[79]

Black Americans found large-scale employment in the U.S. federal government as a consequence of the needs of the government and the policy of the Roosevelt administration, which declared in Executive Order 8802 in 1941 that there be no discrimination in hiring.[80] The War Labor Board did not hire as many black workers as some government agencies did, with a 5½ percent black workforce compared to 12 percent for war agencies overall.[75] However, those black employees that were hired were present across the nation, not just in Washington, D.C., and relatively few were in traditional custodial duties, with most of the black workers either being in either professional or clerical capacities.[81] As a consequence, as stated in an article in the journal Phylon, the War Labor Board was one of the war agencies that enabled black workers to make important occupational gains.[82]

A fair number of the professional staff of the War Labor Board went into academic fields following the end of the war.[76]

Once the war ended with V-J Day in August 1945, labor unions lost interest in maintaining the no-strike pledge.[83] The power of the War Labor Board quickly ebbed, and all sides – labor, industry, and the board members themselves – agreed that the board should wrap up its operations as soon as possible.[84]

Accordingly, Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman, issued Executive Order 9672, ceasing operations of the National War Labor Board on December 31, 1945.[85]

Labor disputes were thereafter arbitrated by the National Labor Relations Board,[1] a predecessor agency that had been set up in 1935 and had gone through various ups and downs before the war.[86]

The end of the war saw rising inflation and the so-called strike wave of 1945–1946.[87] The wave began just two weeks after V-J Day, as unions were no longer bound by their pledge to not engage in strikes.[88] Unions had been gaining strength before the war, a strength that in some ways had been frozen while the War Labor Board adjudicated wage matters, and now that strength was seeking to reassert itself with demands for pay increases of up to 50 percent.[88] Unions were also seeking to have a greater say in management decisions regarding certain aspects of how businesses were run.[89] Over the next year there were some 5,000 different strikes involving around 5 million workers, impacting a number of key industrial and consumer sectors of the economy.[90] The strikes were front-page news as almost every major industry was involved.[91]

The strike wave led to passage of the Taft–Hartley Act of 1947, which modified the Wagner Act and introduced various measures that restricted the activities and power of unions.[87]

The scope of the board was much greater than its World War I equivalent.[92] Indeed, by January 1945, the board – together with its National Defense Mediation Board predecessor – had already made ten times the number of decisions as its earlier incarnation.[92]

The National War Labor Board had a major impact upon the direction of industrial relations in the United States, both during World War II and after it.[93] Indeed, even as the war was still going on and the board still active, there were academic articles being published regarding what the post-war effects of the board might be.[94]

The War Labor Board's "maintenance of membership" determination, and especially the automatic checkoff of union dues that was part of it, significantly helped labor union finances during the war and in particular helped the various CIO unions grow in size.[41]

The National War Labor Board did not completely prevent strikes and other work stoppages from happening during the war, and indeed they rose during the last two years of the conflict.[95] Nor could they prevent wage rates from significantly increasing,[95] as the immense war production contracts being let out by the government inevitably caused a competion for labor resources.[96] There was also more work being done during the war, with the average for regular employees rising from 38 hours per week in 1940 to 45 hours in 1944 (it would fall back to 39 hours per week by the end of the 1940s).[95] Public opinion polls taken during 1941–45 showed that while some 7–15 percent of the public felt that there were "bad things" that unions did, only 4–6 percent felt that unions had interfered in war production.[97]

The trend started during the war due to the Little Steel formula's control over wage increases, that of fringe benefits being considered a valuable thing for employees to get aside from actual wages, continued after it.[10] Even though the power of unions was somewhat constrained by the post-war Taft-Hartley Act, over the next few decades unions gained a considerable number of new benefits, including those related to healthcare, pensions, and unemployment insurance.[98][99]

Over the course of the board's existence, there was some turnover in membership, especially during the latter parts of 1945. Davis stepped down as chair in March 1945 and was succeeded by Taylor, who in turn stepped down in October 1945 and was succeeded by Lloyd K. Garrison, dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School, who had joined the board the previous year and held the chair through the board's end.[100] Public members of note who joined during 1945 included Dexter Merriam Keezer, economist and president of Reed College; Edwin E. Witte, professor of economics, University of Wisconsin; Nathan P. Feinsinger, professor of law, University of Wisconsin; and W. Willard Wirtz, professor of law, Northwestern University.[100]

War Labor Board member Thomas Kennedy (left) conferring with United Mine Workers leader John L. Lewis (right) at a January 1943 board meeting

Turnover was most pronounced among the industry representatives, with sixteen different people being members at one time or another. They included Cyrus S. Ching, vice president at U.S. Rubber Co., and Reuben B. Robertson Jr., vice president at Champion Fiber & Paper Co.[101] Contrariwise, there was only one change in labor membership during this entire time.[102] This was when Van A. Bittner, assistant to the president at the United Steel Workers, succeeded Thomas Kennedy,[102] who had resigned in April 1943 due to unhappiness with the Little Steel formula and other board policies regarding wages.[103]

In addition to the regular members of the board, there were alternate members, associate members, and substitute members, some of whom later became regular members when a vacancy needed filling.[104] In addition, the chairs of the regional boards for each of Regions II, III, and V ended up being selected for regular public membership on the national board, with the attorney Theodore W. Kheel being the one from Region II.[100]

Garrison, with the help of the two prior chairs, oversaw the preparation of an extensive multi-volume termination report for the agency, delivered in 1947.[105]

• National War Labor Board (1918–1919)
• United States home front during World War II

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• Burns, James MacGregor (1956). Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.
• Burns, James MacGregor (1970). Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
• Chamberlain, Neil W. (1953). Social Responsibility and Strikes. New York: Harper & Brothers. Assisted by Jane Metzger Schilling.
• Chamberlain, Neil W.; Schilling, Jane Metzger (1954). The Impact of Strikes: Their Economic and Social Costs. New York: Harper & Brothers.
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• Davis, John A.; Golightly, Cornelius L. (1945). "Negro Employment in the Federal Government". Phylon. 6 (4): 337–346 – via JSTOR.
• Dunlop, John T; Hill, Arthur D. (1950). The Wage Adjustment Board: Wartime Stabilization in the Building and Construction Industry. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
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• Galbraith, John Kenneth (1973). Economics and the Public Purpose. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
• Gross, James A. (1981). Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board: A Study in Economics, Politics, and the Law. Albany: SUNY Press.
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• Lichtenstein, Nelson (1982). Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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• Schumann, Richard E. (September 2001). "Compensation from World War II through the Great Society". Monthly Labor Review.
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• The Termination Report of the National War Labor Board: Industrial Disputes and Wage Stabiliation During Wartime, January 12, 1942—December 31, 1945. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1947. In three volumes: Volume I, Volume II, Volume III.
• Workman, Andrew A. (2000). "Creating the National War Labor Board: Franklin Roosevelt and the Politics of State Building in the Early 1940s". Journal of Policy History. 12 (2): 233–264.

• Grambsch, Paul V., The Impact of the National War Labor Board Upon Management Policy and Practice (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1955)
• Tassava, Christopher J., "The American Economy during World War II", EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples, 2008
• Vickers, Chris, and Nicolas L. Ziebarth, "The Effects of the National War Labor Board on Labor Income Inequality", Auburn University, 2022
• Willard, Timothy A., Labor and the National War Labor Board, 1942–1945: An Experiment in Corporatist Wage Stabilization (Ph.D. diss., University of Toledo, 1984)
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• Guide to the United States NWLB files 1942–1945 at Cornell University ILR Library Kheel Center
• National War Labor Board, Daily Newspaper and Publishing Commission records
• Text of Executive Order 9017, establishing the National War Labor Board (World War II)
• Hearings before the Select Committee to Investigate Seizure of Montgomery Ward & Co. U. S. House of Representatives, May 22 - June 8, 1944. - The testimony (pp. 2–74) of National War Labor Board Chairman William H. Davis before the committee on May 22, 1944, contains a great deal of information on the creation, organization, and practices of the WLB from its inception.
• "Equal Pay for Equal Work: The War Labor Board on Gender Inequality", History Matters, George Mason University
• "The War Labor Board Insists on Equal Pay for Black Workers", History Matters, George Mason University
• Robert Cuff, "National War Labor Board, World War II", Dictionary of American History, 2004, as hosted at Encylopedia.com