National War Labor Board (1942–1945)
The twelve-member board had a tripartite structure, with four members from each of industry, labor, and the public, with William Hammatt Davis as its chair.
It administered wage control in national industries such as automobiles, shipping, railways, airlines, telegraph lines, and mining.
"[1] 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).
[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).
[10] 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.
[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.
[25] 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.
[26] 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.
[32] 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.
[17] The public members of the board were often the ones to decide matters, as the labor and industry representatives adopted the expected partisan viewpoints.
[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] and at times the purposes of the two bodies were at odds.
[20] In June 1942 this was further refined by adding a fifteen-day escape period for new union members to drop their membership, although in practice few new workers would choose to do so.
[44] The "maintenance of membership" scheme remained in place for the duration of the war, eventually covering around three million workers,[20] and did much to contribute to the growth of unions during the period.
[49] This determination became known as the "Little Steel formula" and set a precedent for future wage adjustments to meet recent increases in the cost of living.
[57] In particular, the workers considered the Little Steel limits unfair: the onset of the war had created a surge in demand for coal which in turn had increased their exposure to dangerous conditions and resulting mining accidents, and indeed, from December 1941 through May 1943, total U.S. mine workers killed and injured exceeded total U.S. armed forces casualties of killed, wounded, and missing.
[51] The Roosevelt administration was disturbed by the threat of wages increases continuing to cause inflation,[58] in particular those given by the War Labor Board under the inequities exception to the Little Steel formula.
[59] The order mandated that the Office of Economic Stabilization, led by Roosevelt's longtime friend James F. Byrnes, review War Labor Board decisions.
[10] The expansion of the American workforce during the war included a large rise in the number of women working, often in industrial jobs that were previously considered the domain of men.
[65] Regarding discrimination in terms of race, the War Labor Board followed the dictates of the Fair Employment Practice Committee, which enforced the Roosevelt administration's 1941 order banning discriminatory employment practices by federal agencies, unions, and companies engaged in work related to the war effort.
"[67] The War Labor Board extended this principle to cover areas such as promotions, merit increases, and job classifications.
[20] 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.
[20] At first, the board created a system of regional entities;[69] but as these bodies had advisory capabilities but little final authority, this arrangement proved insufficient as well.
[87] The NWLB also heavily raided the National Labor Relations Board for staff, in the process significantly hindering the other agency's operations.
[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.
[87] 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.
[87] Once the war ended with V-J Day in August 1945, labor unions lost interest in maintaining the no-strike pledge.
[95] Accordingly, Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman, issued Executive Order 9672, ceasing operations of the National War Labor Board on December 31, 1945.
[100] 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.
The basic answer, I believe, is that, in spite of all of the pulling, pushing, snorting, and pounding which enlivened its course, all elements of the Board were powerfully propelled by a deep sense of devotion to a country which even in wartime permitted such an untrammeled performance in handling labor disputes, instead of committing them to the much more tidy disposition of a dictatorship.
[109] Nor could they prevent wage rates from significantly increasing,[109] as the immense war production contracts being let out by the government inevitably caused a competition for labor resources.
