The National War Labor Board, commonly the War Labor Board (NWLB or WLB), was an independent agency of the United States government, established January 12, 1942, by an executive order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the purpose of which was to mediate labor disputes as part of the American home front during World War II.

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. Acting as an arbitration tribunal, the board replaced normal collective bargaining during the war, as it could intervene in any labor dispute that it saw as endangering "the effective prosecution of the war" and put into place a settlement. It administered wage control in national industries such as automobiles, shipping, railways, airlines, telegraph lines, and mining.

The board was additionally divided into twelve Regional War Labor Boards which handled both labor dispute settlement and wage stabilization functions for specific geographic sections of the country. The board also had a number of commissions and panels set up to deal with certain specific industries.

Important decisions the board made included a "maintenance of membership" rule regarding union security; an inflation-based rule known as the "Little Steel formula" for putting an upper bound on wage increases; and rulings that required equal pay for equal work for women employees and disallowed pay differentials based on employees' race. As one assessment has written, the War Labor Board "held enormous power over American production and industry."

Background and origins 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).Samuelson, Economics, pp. 128–130. The CIO, helped by the passage of legislation such as the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the Wagner Act of 1935, attained a strong position in industries such as steel, oil, rubber, and automobiles.Samuelson, Economics, p. 130.

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).Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose, pp. 194–196. Following the start of World War II in Europe in 1939, even though the United States was not yet itself at war, the country began an economic mobilization; it was considered as almost obvious that the government would have to put into place some kind of program to prevent or bring to an immediate end strikes, if the mobilization was to be effective.

Under the Roosevelt administration, several federal entities began overseeing industrial production and industrial relations, the last of bodies being the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board for goods production and the National Defense Mediation Board for labor issues, but none of them were especially effective.Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, pp. 51–53, 151, 191, 192–193. In particular, the Mediation Board had proved unable to resolve a dispute in summer 1941 at the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in New Jersey,Workman, "Creating the National War Labor Board", p. 249. and then had become inconsequential following a November 1941 dispute involving the CIO and certain coal mines that were owned by steel companies.Workman, "Creating the National War Labor Board", p. 250. That dispute ended with the CIO dropping out of the board.Schumann, "Compensation from World War II through the Great Society", p. 1.

Creation and structure

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. In January 1942, Roosevelt established the War Production Board.Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, pp. 191–192. The danger of strikes occurring during wartime was not just a direct military cost but also a public outrage over the sight of, as one study puts it, "workers' laying down tools [while] men are shouldering arms on battle fronts, the possible danger to the security of loved ones".Chamberlain and Schilling, The Impact of Strikes, pp. 39–40. A major labor-management conference took place in December 1941, and while labor and industry representatives could not agree on everything, they did agree on a no-strike, no-lockout pledge for the duration of the war and on having some kind of mediation board, the structure of which the Roosevelt administration would largely be able to determine.Workman, "Creating the National War Labor Board", pp. 251–253.

So the National War Labor Board was established by Roosevelt under Executive Order 9017, issued on January 12, 1942. Roosevelt said that "the national interest demands that there shall be no interruption of any work which contributes to the effective prosecution of the war". The NWLB was given the authority to "finally determine" any labor dispute which threatened to interrupt war production, and to stabilize union wages and benefits during the war. The United States Congress had no role in the creation of the board.Seidman, American Labor from Defense to Reconversion, p. 81. The executive order which created the NWLB was imprecise in delineating its jurisdictional responsibilities, a lacuna which later would lead to some bureaucratic frictions.Gross, The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board, p. 358n12. In any case, the creation of the board was an above-the-fold story in the next day's New York Times.

The twelve-member board had a tripartite structure, with four members from each of industry, labor, and the public. While tripartite arrangements had sometimes been used in the past, they were always in a voluntary or advisory arrangement; the War Labor Board was the first to do so in a body with more force behind it.Dixon, "Tripartitism in the National War Labor Board", p. 372. The chairman of the new board was William Hammatt Davis, a patent attorney from New York; he had been chair of the National Defense Mediation Board, which was abolished as part of Roosevelt's action. Roosevelt had confidence in Davis,Workman, "Creating the National War Labor Board", p. 251. and as Davis had established a reputation for being impartial during this prior stint, neither labor nor industry protested his being named to head the new entity.

Operation

Dispute cases came to the War Labor Board from the U.S. Secretary of Labor, usually after the United States Conciliation Service, which was part of that labor department, had been unable to bring the disagreement to a settlement. But the board repeatedly stated that its arbitration procedures were not supposed to be replacing collective bargaining,Fisher, "The National War Labor Board and Postwar Industrial Relations", pp. 487–488. and indeed, the board insisted that collective bargaining have been fully tried before it would take on a dispute, including use of the Conciliation Service. Overall, about 27 percent of cases received by the Conciliation Service ended up being sent to the War Labor Board.

Once a dispute was accepted by the War Labor Board, it was mandated to see it through to a binding settlement,Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, p. 196. whether by mediation, voluntary arbitration, or imposed arbitration.Atleson, Labor and the Wartime State, p. 45. This gave the board more power than either its immediate predecessor National Defense Mediation Board or its First World War namesake.Atleson, Labor and the Wartime State, pp. 45–46.

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.Seidman, American Labor from Defense to Reconversion, p. 82. 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.Seidman, American Labor from Defense to Reconversion, p. 83.

In the face of the no-strike pledge agreed to by union leaders, there were a number of wildcat strikes during the war.Atleson, Labor and the Wartime State, p. 188. Indeed, the number increased during 1943, which led to the passage in June of that year of the War Labor Disputes Act.Atleson, Labor and the Wartime State, pp. 188, 195. This gave the War Labor Board even more power.

While in legal terms the War Labor Board did not have the power to go to the court system in order force compliance to its rulings, it could go to the White House, which in the ultimate case had the power to seize factories and plants.Richards, "Tripartitism and Regional War Labor Boards", p. 76. This threat tended to be more effective against violations by management than against violations by labor.Schumann, "Compensation from World War II through the Great Society", pp. 1–2. In practice, the board established what one scholar has called a "common law of industrial relations", built up over a series of decisions and precedents from the regional boards and panels and commissions and considered as precedents or not by the national board.Fisher, "The National War Labor Board and Postwar Industrial Relations", pp. 485–486. 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.Dunlop and Hill, The Wage Adjustment Board, p. 89. Penalties for unions that were flaunting regulations could include removal of overtime or shift premium benefits or removal of union security provisions.Atleson, Labor and the Wartime State, p. 189. One scholar has described the board's powers as "semicompulsive".

The public members of the board were often the ones to decide matters, as the labor and industry representatives adopted the expected partisan viewpoints.Keezer, "Observations on the Operations of the National War Labor Board", p. 239. In discussions on the board, both labor and industry representatives tended to use strong language and arguments, although it was often for the sake of effect.Seidman, American Labor from Defense to Reconversion, pp. 83–84. The economist Dexter Merriam Keezer, who was a public member of the national board in the later stages of the war, noted that the board's business was conducted in a "socially rugged manner" in which "it was commonplace to have charges ranging from those of deceitfulness, venality, and vulgar avarice to the relatively mild accusation that one was being willfully and stubbornly obtuse tossed around the Board and accented by shouting and table pounding." Nevertheless, Keezer said, such accusations were the custom in American labor relations and were rarely meant to be taken personally.Keezer, "Observations on the Operations of the National War Labor Board", p. 234.

The National War Labor Board displaced the pre-war National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as the main focus of federal labor relations for the duration of the war. Although Roosevelt instructed the NWLB not to intrude on jurisdiction exercised by the NLRB, the War Labor Board did not honor this request, and at times the purposes of the two bodies were at odds.Atleson, Labor and the Wartime State, p. 196. From 1942 to 1945, the NRLB chairman, Harry A. Millis, tried to secure a jurisdictional agreement with the NWLB, but these discussions proved fruitless and Millis broke them off near the conclusion of the war.Gross, The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board, p. 243.