[17] Simeon E. Leland, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Northwestern University and chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, later said it was a landmark in the study of state tax issues and anticipated the later, better-known work by Seligman and Adams.
At the time of his death, a group of prominent economists called it "the most authoritative and comprehensive analysis of modern labor economics for the period covered.
Finally, threatened with a major strike in the steel industry and a Senate labor relations bill moving forward without presidential input, Roosevelt personally drafted Public Resolution No.
44, a bill which authorized the president to create one or more new labor boards to enforce Section 7(a) by conducting investigations, subpoenaing evidence and witnesses, holding elections, and issuing orders.
[31] Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6073 on June 29, 1934, which abolished the NLB and established the National Labor Relations Board.
The NLRB's chairman, 36-year-old Lloyd K. Garrison, had agreed to serve as the chair only to get the board up and running, and he resigned on October 2, 1934, to resume his position as dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School.
She secretly met with President Roosevelt and secured changes to the executive order appointing Biddle to the NLRB which placed the agency completely under her control.
[44] Millis was, Biddle said, "profoundly conscious of the injustices that had been done labor's attempt to organize, although at the same time aware of the dangerous weaknesses in a good deal of labor leadership: not only the racketeering and the feather-bedding, but the lack of imagination, the insistence on improved wages and hours as the sole end, the petty jurisdictional jealousies and squabbles..."[44] Millis played a major role in maintaining the "first" NLRB's jurisdiction as well.
[43] If the NLRB bowed to the newspaper's interpretation, it would be essentially giving up all of its authority to the National Recovery Administration (NRA), with which it was already locked in a jurisdictional struggle.
Instead, the NLRB decided to challenge the NRA's claim of authority over all labor disputes in industries covered by NIRA codes.
[45] NRA chief counsel Donald Richberg angrily supported the NIB and the newspaper industry, and challenged the NLRB's jurisdictional claim.
[49] The following day, Millis, Biddle, and NLRB member Edwin S. Smith agreed to challenge the president on the jurisdictional issue.
His bill, which became the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), was enacted by Congress on June 27, 1935, and signed into law by President Roosevelt on July 5.
[53] Millis, wishing to return to his home in Chicago, resigned from the NLRB shortly after passage of the NLRA and was succeeded on the Board by John M.
[54] Even as he left the Board, however, Millis successfully recommended David J. Saposs as first Chief Economist to lead the new NLRB Division of Economic Research.
[7] In 1940, President Roosevelt asked Millis to become the permanent arbiter between General Motors (GM) and the United Auto Workers (UAW).
[21] The 1937 collective bargaining agreement between the company and its union established a temporary, voluntary arbitration procedure, which was made permanent in the 1940 contract.
[15] Finally, in March 1940, Millis joined Collective Bargaining Advisors, a private group dedicated to promoting peaceful labor relations through "scientific" practices.
[68] Media and public opinion turned strongly against what was perceived as an overreaching NLRB,[69] and President Roosevelt announced the formation of a commission to study the Board's operations.
[7] Senator Wagner and influential Roosevelt confidante and labor leader Sidney Hillman both suggested Millis to the president.
[75][76] David Saposs, also under fire for alleged communist beliefs, left the Board on October 11 after Congress defunded his office.
[80] Millis allied with Leiserson against Edwin S. Smith, and made extensive changes in NLRB administration, doctrine, personnel and operations.
[87] Millis' alliance with Leiserson also overturned a number of the NLRB's more radical precedents and established a more moderate labor policy.
[88] The Millis-led Board also issued a number of decision that turned the bar on representation petitions during the term of the contract into a tool for ensuring the security of incumbent unions.
[94] Reilly believed Millis was too much influenced by Chief Trial Examiner Frank Bloom (a left-wing lawyer) and Oscar Smith, head of Field Division.
[96] Although Roosevelt instructed the NWLB not to intrude on jurisdiction exercised by the NLRB, the War Labor Board refused to honor this request.
He vigorously dissented in American News Company, Inc., 55 1302 (1944), a decision in which the Board held that strikers not protected from discharge or refusals of reinstatement if they struck for an illegal reason.
He became senior adviser to the newly formed Industrial Relations Center, and (with former student Emily Clark Brown) began a major analysis of federal labor policy.
[14][21] Harry A. Millis died on June 25, 1948, at Albert Merritt Billings Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, two weeks after suffering a stroke.
[2][14] He was survived by his wife, Alice; son John (at the time, president of the University of Vermont); and daughters Savilla and Charlotte.