Creating the National War Labor Board: Franklin Roosevelt and the Politics of State Building in the Early 1940s

Abstract

In January 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order creating a National War Labor Board (NWLB) to arbitrate wartime industrial disputes. Roosevelt's order provided enormous power for the board, which could, on its own motion, intervene in any labor conflict it deemed a threat to “the effective prosecution of the war” and subsequently impose settlements on the parties. In practice, the board replaced free collective bargaining for the duration of the war. Most scholars of the era agree that the NWLB, operating at a time when New Deal labor policy was still in formation and many unions had not yet become entrenched in their industries, had a profound impact on the evolution of the American industrial relations system during the war and thereafter.Despite a superficial similarity to earlier labor boards, the NWLB was a curious creature born, in the words of one of its members, “out of deadlock,” and of a breed uncommon on the American political landscape. The board's authority was nominally grounded on an agreement by a 1941 national labor-management conference to eschew strikes and lockouts in lieu of arbitration. Yet this conference had reached an impasse and its “agreement” had been forced on the business delegates by Roosevelt.