Seidenberg, Jacob

Independent arbitrator, scholar and member of several Presidential Emergency Boards and Boards of Inquiry.

Independent arbitrator, scholar and member of several Presidental Emergency Boards and Boards of Inquiry.

Jacob Seidenberg earned an LL.B. at the University of Pennsylvania (1941) and a Ph.D. at Cornell University (1951). A labor attorney for the U.S. Army (1941-1943), and an economist and attorney for the Philadelphia Regional War Labor Board (1943-1946), Seidenberg also served as assistant to the general counsel, National Wage Stabilization Board (1947) and as chief enforcement attorney for the Philadelphia Regional Wage Stabilization Board in the following year. Thereafter, Seidenberg pursued a career as an arbitrator and sometime academic. He is the author of two monographs, several government reports and articles in the fields of labor and industrial relations and race relations. Additional government service includes consulting with the Wage Stabilization Board and the President's Committee on Government Contract Compliance and service as the chairman of several government committees with labor-related responsibilities, as well as on a number of Presidential Emergency Boards established under the Railway Labor Act.

Jacob Seidenberg was born on October 25, 1914. He graduated from Temple University in 1937 and received a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1941. He was an attorney with the U.S. War Department in 1941; the National War Labor Board, 1943 to 1946; and the National Wage Stabilization Board, 1951. In 1948 he went to graduate school at Cornell University, and earned his Ph.D. in industrial and labor relations in 1951. He joined the staff of the President's Committee on Government Contract Compliance in 1958, and was later appointed Executive Director of the committee. He served in this position until January 1960, when he resigned to become a full time labor arbitrator. Throughout his career, he served on a number of boards of inquiry involving labor disputes. From 1970 to 1975 he was chairman of the Federal Services Impasses Panel, which settled deadlocks in federal labor negotiations. He died on October 16, 1996.