Guy Otto Farmer (September 13, 1912 – October 4, 1995) was an American lawyer and civil servant. He was Chairman of the United States National Labor Relations Board from July 1953 to August 1955. After leaving government service, he represented the Bituminous Coal Operators Association, the collective bargaining arm of the bituminous coal mining industry in the United States.
Early life and education Farmer was born September 13, 1912, to Harbert and Kate (Bell) Farmer of Foster Falls, Virginia.Current Biography, p. 192. He had seven brothers and two sisters. His father was a coal mine foreman, and when Farmer was an infant the family moved to the small town of Maybeury, West Virginia. He was raised in Maybeury, worked in coal mines during school vacations, and graduated from a local high school.
He enrolled at West Virginia University, earning his bachelor's degree in 1934 and his Juris Doctor in 1936. He was admitted to the bar the same year he received his J.D. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Alpha Delta, and the Order of the Coif. He won a Rhodes Scholarship in December 1935, and studied at the University of Oxford from 1936 to 1937.The American Bar, p. 1002.
After returning to the United States, Farmer took up residence in Washington, D.C., in 1937, and in 1938 joined the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as an attorney. He later was appointed a regional attorney in both Los Angeles and Minneapolis, where he oversaw other NLRB staff attorneys. From 1943 to 1945, he was associate general counsel at the NLRB's national headquarters.
In 1945, Farmer left the NLRB and joined the D.C. firm of Steptoe & Johnson. Among his many clients at the firm was the Bituminous Coal Operators Association, a group of coal mining companies which bargained as a group with the United Mine Workers of America. Farmer became a partner in the firm in 1949.Stavisky, Sam. "Guy Farmer Is Ike's 1st NLRB Appointee." Washington Post. July 8, 1953. On September 15, 1950, Robert N. Denham resigned as General Counsel of the NLRB. Farmer was among those named as under consideration by the Truman administration as a successor to Denham. But Farmer was passed over in favor of George J. Bott (who remained General Counsel for most of Farmer's term as chair of the NLRB, his term of office ending on December 20, 1954).
Nomination as a member to the NLRB A number of political factors led to Farmer's appointment as chair of the NLRB in 1953. Among these was McCarthyism, a strong fear of communism which gripped the United States from 1950 to 1954. Another was the change in political control of the government. In November 1952, Republican Dwight Eisenhower was elected President of the United States, and the Republican Party won majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives. However, the most influential figure on labor relations and labor law was not Eisenhower but Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio. Taft had co-authored the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, legislation which significantly restricted the use of the strike, outlawed the closed shop, imposed a new class of unfair labor practices (ULPs) on unions, and gave states the right to enact right-to-work laws. Throughout the spring of 1953, the House Committee on Education and Labor and the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare conducted hearings designed to lay the groundwork for ideological and doctrinal changes at the NLRB once President Eisenhower was able to appoint a majority of the Board's members. Gerard Reilly, a former NLRB member who had helped draft the Taft-Hartley Act, later wrote that the hearings made it clear that the NLRB under chair Paul M. Herzog had construed the law broadly to rein in employers but adopted a narrow view when it came to union ULPs.Reilly, p. 374. Witnesses testified that the Board had restricted employer free speech, crafted loopholes to permit unions to engage in secondary boycotts, found new "rights" that permitted unions to challenge employer lockouts, infringed on states' rights, permitted bargaining during the term of the collective bargaining agreement, and expanded the legal list of mandatory bargaining subjects.
Eisenhower's opportunity to radically change the composition of the NLRB came earlier than anyone thought. Paul Herzog had been nominated to a second five-year term on the Board on July 24, 1950, and confirmed by the Senate on July 31. But after the Republican sweep of 1952, Herzog privately told his friends that he wanted to leave the agency. The political status of the Board deteriorated throughout the spring of 1953. In addition to the House and Senate labor board hearings, the Eisenhower administration embarked on a series of private, high-level negotiations to further amend the Taft-Hartley Act and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Martin P. Durkin, president of the United Association of Plumbers and Steamfitters, had been appointed Secretary of Labor but was considering leaving the department because of opposition within the administration and lack of agreement on the Taft-Hartley and NLRA amendments. Herzog, who had once been on the faculty at Harvard University, began seeking appointment to the faculty of the college. On May 1, 1953, Herzog announced that he would resign as chair of the NLRB effective June 30, 1953.
President Eisenhower's staff quickly selected Farmer as Herzog's replacement. Publicly, Farmer was portrayed as a political independent.Chamberlain, p. 542. He had few personal associations with management and his professional contacts were perceived as legal and contractual rather than ideological.Scher, p. 683. But privately, Farmer was well known as a strong conservative, an avid proponent of states' rights, and an early and avid political backer of Eisenhower.Chamberlain, p. 542. By June 21, Farmer was reported to be Eisenhower's only choice as Herzog's replacement."G.O.P. Choices Likely to Rule N.L.R.B. Soon." New York Times. June 22, 1953. However, Eisenhower also informed his cabinet that all agency appointments should be cleared with the Republican National Committee (RNC),Mackenzie, p. 17. which was known to be much more conservative on labor issues than the administration. The RNC went so far as to advocate that all Roosevelt and Truman administration appointees to the NLRB be fired, no matter how competent. Farmer's views of federal labor law were strongly conservative. Farmer thought the federal role in labor relations should be delegated to the states. "...I favor as much decentralization as possible; and as much as possible should be done with the board's discretionary authority, which has some limits on it now, to cede to the states by agreement." Farmer advocated wholesale re-examination of the major decision of the Herzog board, especially in those areas restricting employer freedom of speech, permitting bargaining during the contract, and giving unions preferential treatment in captive audience meetings. Farmer was also a vigorous anti-communist, which further heightened his appeal as chairman. He believed that communists had infiltrated not only American labor unions but the staff of the NLRB itself (some at the highest levels of the Board), and that it was his duty to purge the NLRB of these individuals.
Farmer agreed that the Eisenhower administration was locked in a battle for control of the NLRB. He leveled implicit criticism at the Herzog board for imposing an interpretation on the law that favored unions. He felt that gaining control of the NLRB was one of the most important initiatives the Eisenhower administration could undertake: ...this is not pinochle we're playing here. It's not penny-anty. This battle is over control of one of the most powerful agencies that ever existed in Washington—the NLRB. ... I just don't see how you can justify saying that this is really not important because this is what goes on; and there's nothing particularly wrong with it. Well, everything is wrong with it! Everything is wrong with it! Because ... it's becoming worse and worse.
Eisenhower nominated Farmer to be NLRB chair on July 7, 1953, for a term to expire on August 27, 1955. His confirmation hearings were noncontroversial, and he was confirmed by the United States Senate for the position on July 10.Scher, p. 684; "Senate Confirms Three For Labor Agencies." Washington Post. July 11, 1953. He was sworn in on July 13.
Obtaining a Republican majority on the Board Deadlock Even before Farmer was nominated, another seat opened on the NLRB. On June 29, 1953, member Paul L. Styles (a liberal Truman appointee) announced he was resigning from the NLRB effective September 1, 1953."3 of 5 N.L.R.B. Seats Open." New York Times. June 30, 1953.Styles' reasons for leaving the Board are unclear. Solomon G. Lippman, general counsel for the Retail Clerks International Union, claimed in Senate testimony before the United States Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management in 1957 that Styles had been induced to leave the Board by Nathan Shefferman, a one-time Teamsters official and co-founder of Labor Relations Associates (a union-avoidance consulting firm). According to Lippman, Shefferman told Styles he was "too liberal" for the Board and offered him a high-paying job if he left the agency. Whatever his reason for leaving the NLRB, Styles did quit, and took a job with Retail Associates, Inc., a Shefferman-run association of retail stores based in Toledo, Ohio. See: The McClellan Committee Hearings, 1957, p. 368; Jacoby, p. 130–137. Another seat on the Board was due to come open on August 27, 1953, when member John Mills Houston's term was due to expire (he did not seek reappointment)."Board Vacancies Filled," New York Times, July 29, 1953. On July 28, Eisenhower nominated Philip Ray Rodgers to fill Houston's seat. Rodgers was a strong conservative and Taft protégé who considered himself management's representative on the Board. He had advocated a much tougher version of the Taft-Hartley Act than Senator Taft himself preferred, was a vigorous anticommunist, was much more pointed in public than Farmer about rolling back the Herzog Board's decisions, and openly called for stacking the NLRB staff with Republicans to ensure that "appropriate" policy decisions were made.
Farmer was consistently in the minority in NLRB decisions during his first two months on the board, outvoted by the holdover Truman appointees (Houston, Styles, Ivar H. Peterson, and Abe Murdock)."Eisenhower Gaining Control of N.L.R.B." New York Times. August 29, 1953. Rodgers was sworn in on August 28, and Styles' resignation became effective September 1. This left a 2-to-2 deadlock on the Board which persisted until February 1954. To lay the groundwork for rolling back some of the Herzog Board's decisions, Farmer exercised one of his few powers as chair and announced in late August that the Board would hear more oral arguments."A Test for the Labor Board." New York Times. September 2, 1953.
Beeson nomination The conservative millionaire Secretary of Commerce, Sinclair Weeks, was the administration's most vocal and most powerful voice on labor law. Secretary of Labor Durkin was increasingly isolated and ineffective within the administration. As the effective date of Styles' resignation approached, Eisenhower seemed ready to appoint Lawrence E. Gooding, chairman of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Board, to the NLRB as his replacement."N.L.R.B. Post Seen for Wisconsin Man." New York Times. August 11, 1953. But Gooding was opposed by the American Federation of Labor, and Eisenhower (who was courting the more conservative elements in the labor movement)Loftus, Joseph A. "Labor Policies and Politics Collide at the White House." New York Times. September 28, 1953. decided against nominating him.