Creating the center: Liberal intellectuals, the National War Labor Board, and the stabilization of American industrial relations, 1941-1945

This dissertation examines how the public members of the tripartite National War Labor Board shaped the American industrial relations system during World War II. It argues that the special circumstances of the war allowed these liberal intellectuals to complete the development of New Deal union policy and secure it against conservative backlash. They met with success because their vision of industrial relations, formed in universities, private foundations, and government bureaus over the preceding four decades, provided a middle ground capable of encompassing the conflicting desires of unions and industry while still maintaining war production. Contrary to recent scholarship on this topic, I assert that the NWLB proved more a bulwark against wartime reaction than an impediment to workers' rights.;Liberal intellectuals such as William H. Davis, Chair of the NWLB and its predecessor, the National Defense Mediation Board, fostered industry-wide bargaining, contractually mandated grievance resolution, rationalized personnel systems, and wider acceptance of unions by employers, all of which strengthened the still tenuous position that many unions held in the early 1940s. This helped to continue the process of unionization made possible by the Wagner Act and the National Labor Relations Board. Furthermore, by strengthening union organizations, helping to increase their memberships, and delaying drastic revisions of the Wagner Act, the NWLB's public members secured organized labor against conservative challenges during and after the war.;This dissertation is divided into three parts. The first discusses how the ideas and actions of industrial relations intellectuals came to the forefront of wartime labor policy. The next section examines the corporatist bargain on union security and wage stabilization negotiated by the public members in the first year of the war and also the formation of their system for institutionalizing peaceful relations between unions and management. The final chapters consider the last years of the war in which the public members defended their program from attacks on two fronts. From one side, top mobilization agencies attempted to place rigid limits on the NWLB's freedom of action on wage questions. From the other direction came attacks by rank and file workers and leaders such as John L. Lewis, unhappy about wage freezes amidst rising prices. Although the NWLB's public members met with some defeats, most notably in their encounter with the United Mine Workers, the core of their program lasted until the war's end.