William A. Waldron personal papers

William A. Waldron was born in Schenectady, New York on August 1, 1913. He graduated from Union College in 1935. Later, he earned degrees in Political Economy and Law from Harvard University. Before practicing law, Waldron served on the staffs of the New York State Assembly and Constitutional Convention in 1938. During the Second World War, William served in the Department of Justice as an Assistant Attorney (1942); as Mediation Officer (1942-1943) and as Regional Attorney for the National War Labor Board (1944-1945). In 1953 he succeeded former Congressman Thomas H. Eliot as executive director of the Massachusetts Special Commission on the Structure of State Government. Later he served as commissioner of administration for Governor Endicott Peabody, a special assistant attorney general, and a special counsel to the Committee on Rules of the House of Representatives. In the town of Wayland, he was chairman of the School Committee and held other offices. In 1975, Mr. Waldron organized the legal affairs of the Massachusetts General Hospital and he joined the Hospital's staff as its first full-time general counsel. He retired in 1981. He was a trustee of Union College from 1959-1975 and was the receipient of the Union College Alumni Gold Medal. Active in alumni relations as well as planning class reunions, he maintained life-long bonds with Union College. He died in 2009.

During World War II, the Federal Government, in close cooperation with unions and employers throughout the country, undertook two vital functions affecting industrial relations: the settlement of labor disputes which endangered the war effort and the stabilization of wages as an integral part of the overall program to prevent inflation.

During most of its life, the National War Board functioned outside of the Department of Labor. Short after V-J Day, the President by Executive Order incorporated the Board within the Departmental structure. But throughout the war, various divisions of the Department played vitally important roles. The Conciliation Service worked on an intimate basis with the staff of the Board in the settlement of numerous disputes. The Wage and Hour and Public Contracts Division played a major role in both the administration and enforcement of the wage stabilization program. The Bureau of Labor Statistics was the primary fact-finding agency of the Board, furnishing, above all, the bulk of the wage data essential to the Board's dispute settlement and wage stabilization functions.

The principal factors that made possible the War Labor Board of World War II were the no-strike, no-lockout agreement of the December Conference, substituting peaceful adjudication by the War Labor Board for the picket line, and the tripartite composition of the Board. In the fall of 1940 and the early spring of 1941, labor-management disputes had resulted in numerous and serious strikes which were alarmingly impeding the defense effort then getting under way. It was in these circumstances that the national Defense Mediation Board initiated the idea of trying to get strikers back to work before the dispute was settled; asking for resumption of defense production on the understanding that the case would be submitted by the parties to the Board for investigation and that the conditions of employment would continue without change during the investigation.