Description
Book SynopsisRonald Schatz tells the story of the team of young economists and lawyers whom George W. Taylor recruited to the National War Labor Board to resolve union-management conflicts during the Second World War.
Trade Review"A fascinating and unusual book that traces the emergence and impact of a generation of labor relations professionals who left their stamp not only on the field in which they were trained but also higher education, urban politics, foreign policy, sports and much more." --
ILR Review"Masterfully crisp and energetic writing." --
Chronicle of the National Academy of Arbitrators"Amazing new book. . . . Getting past inertia and suspicion has been difficult in an era of neoliberalism and hyper-nationalist politics. Even if the world of the Labor Board vets no longer exists, it was arguably the period American workers did their best economically. In helping us to rethink assumptions about the era, Schatz has done admirable work." --
Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"This fine book deserving wide readership among scholars interested in post-1945 business, economics, and political history." --
Journal of American History"It's well done, and many historians should read it." --
American Historical Review"A valuable perspective on a unique moment in US industrial relations and economic history." --
British Journal of Industrial Relations"Moser’s book will bring renewed attention to Freeth, whose contributions to surf and beach culture in California have typically been overshadowed by those of his fellow Hawaiian waterman and protege Duke Kahanamoku." --
San Francisco Chronicle"Well worth the wait. . . . Like a vintage wine,
The Labor Board Crew takes on added value and importance now, by providing readers an opportunity to reflect on a generation of pioneers in the field of industrial relations who have all passed on." --
Negotiation Journa "A learned, engaging, and important book on a subject about which most labor historians today, I suspect, know relatively little. Ron Schatz demonstrates convincingly, through clear and absorbing case studies, that the officials responsible for operationalizing a labor-relations system in these years also brought their worldviews, desires for stability, and passions to many other arenas ranging from higher education to baseball to Gorbachev and the end of the Cold War." --Eric Arnesen, author of
Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality "A fascinating collective biography of the architects of postwar U.S. industrial relations, a unique generation whose pluralist worldview was forged in the crucible of wartime. Schatz brilliantly exposes their subsequent leadership shaping a variety of institutions, from higher education to international diplomacy, even as the industrial relations system they had created devolved."--Ruth Milkman,
Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War IITable of ContentsPreface
Abbreviations and Acronyms
1 In the Wake of Pearl Harbor
2 George Taylor and the War Labor Board, 1942-45
3 On Top of the World, 1946-56
4 Down-to-Earth Utopians
5 War and Peace in Steel, 1959-72
6 When the Meek Began to Roar: Public Employee Unionism in the 1960s
7 “How Can We Avoid a Columbia?” The Student Revolt, 1964-71
8 A Whole Different Ball Game, 1968-81
9 George Shultz at the Negotiating Table
10 Doing the Lord’s Work
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
