This Day in Labor History: January 12, 1942

On January 12, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9017, creating the National War Labor Board. The goal of this board was to mediate all labor issues until the end of the war, ensuring a smoothly running American economy for wartime purposes. It was always hard to keep that going, but the NWLB overall did a remarkable job of staving off major labor disputes. The reason was its makeup, which placed organized labor on an equal playing field with business. It was hardly a paradise for labor unions, but the NWLB both solidified organized labor’s role in American policymaking and forestalled most of the major strikes that might get in way of defeating the fascists.

The U.S. moved toward entering World War II with significant upheaval in its workplaces. The late 30s were the great era of American labor organizing, with the big CIO unions forming, often through mass strikes. The Roosevelt administration had already done more for workers than any administration in history, but it was often a slog to get the government to do the right thing for unions and workers. Even FDR himself was maddeningly inconsistent in his approach to unions. But with the nation moving toward war, it could not afford Ford and Little Steel and Montgomery Ward and other recalcitrant corporations and industries to engage in violence to stop unions. Anything that led to a strike meant less material heading to the front lines. It was simply unacceptable.

The Roosevelt administration had a lot of tools in its box. First, it had defense contracts. It was only when Ford and the Little Steel companies were told they were not going to get war contracts that they very reluctantly acquiesced to unionized workforces. A lot of that happened in 1941. But what would happen in the war itself? The potential for strikes that would cripple industry and thus war production was very real. But the workers themselves were right about many of their demands and Roosevelt knew this.

So FDR issued Executive Order 9017 on January 12, 1942. It created a binding tripartite commission to solve labor disputes in the war, with four members each representing labor, business, and the government. Now, in most administrations those government appointees would probably be pro-business hacks, but Roosevelt wanted to keep things very even. William Hammatt Davis was named by FDR as the head and he had helped write the National Labor Relations Act. So if the NWLB was not exactly pro-union, it was very certainly not pro-business. That was a hard job to run this. Workers and business were both still pissed at each other, very willing to continue the labor wars of the 30s.

So the NWLB had special powers. It basically superseded the National Labor Relations Board for the duration of the war. It was in charge of collective bargaining now. It could intervene in any labor dispute seen as impacting the ability to fight the war, which was effectively every labor dispute in an economy producing almost entirely for military consumption. It created twelve regional labor boards to do much of the work on the local level. It also would decided that women would get equal pay for equal work, which many industrialists had hoped to avoid when they were forced to hire women. Then, in 1943, it created equal pay for equal work based on race as well, which was even more controversial than doing it on the basis of gender. Few workers really protested about women on the job, but lots protested about Blacks on the job and there were racist hate strikes throughout the war when the government forced the integration of workplaces.

The NWLB had to get both labor and business on board. Labor was someone easier, but it was a big ask–no strikes during the war. A lot of rank and file members had no interest in this. But in return, it received a maintenance of membership clause. That meant that existing union members had to remain union members, the automatic dues checkoff would become automatic, and while it left the issue of the closed or open shop unresolved, it effectively weighed it all to the closed shop since once a worker signed a card, they could not renege on that membership and thus the dues. This solidified union finances. That was highly needed since the CIO was in bad shape financially, with John L. Lewis having pulled his United Mine Workers and all the funding it provided out after the rest of the labor movement did not follow him in opposing FDR’s third term in 1940.

But business got its wins too. Of course it was happy to not have to deal with major strikes during the war. The NWLB adopted the so-called Little Steel formula to cap wage gains and they didn’t quite keep up with inflation, frustrating workers a whole lot. Moreover, the NWLB was not interested in really working out the endless fights on the ground between labor and business. Wildcat strikes were endemic during the war. Foremen were still assholes and resented unions getting in the way of their little fiefdoms. Their bosses certainly encouraged that behavior. Union members had won a lot striking and wanted to strike some more. So there were thousands of strikes. One of them was even about cigarette smoking on the job. Workers were pissed. They wanted to win the war, but they wanted rights on the job too and they wanted power and they didn’t really like the government getting in the way. Of course, most of these strikes ended in a matter of hours, or a couple of days at the most. Union leaders forced the workers to stop it.

There were a few situations out of the NWLB’s control. But the government was willing to act. On the labor side, John L. Lewis refused to accept NWLB authority and led his mineworkers out on strike in 1943 and the govenrment responded by seizing the coal mines and running them. On the business side, Montgomery Ward chief Sewell Avery refused to accept NWLB authority and the government occupied the corporation.

In the end, the NWLB was pretty great for workers because it solidified unions as a legitimate part of government. Some would bemoan the connections it created between unions and the Democratic Party, for unions never would be any more than a junior member of the coalition and as we got farther from the war, Democrats’ indifference and even hostility to organized labor would grow (unless they needed GOTV operations or money of course). But if you look at the state of organized labor in 1941 versus the last day of 1945, when the NWLB closed its doors, unions were much stronger, more powerful, and able to do more for their members.

This is the 587th post in this series. Previous posts are archived here.