Taylor, George William, 1901-1972

George W. Taylor (July 10, 1901 – December 15, 1972) was a notable professor of industrial relations at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and is credited with founding the academic field of study known as industrial relations.[1] He served in several capacities in the federal government, most notably as a mediator and arbitrator. During his career, Taylor settled more than 2,000 strikes.[2]

In 1967, he helped draft the New York state civil service law which legalized collective bargaining in that state but which also banned strikes by public employees—legislation widely known today as the Taylor Law.[3]

Taylor was born in the Kensington industrial neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 10, 1901. In 1921, Taylor graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School. professor in the department of business administration at Albright College, and obtained his doctorate in economics from the Wharton School in 1929. In 1930, Taylor received an appointment as an assistant professor at his alma mater, the Wharton School In 1935, after a period of service to the federal government, Taylor become impartial chairman for a labor arbitration committee established by the Men's Clothing Manufacturers' Association and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. He held that position until 1961.[1]

By 1940, Taylor had settled roughly 1,400 labor disputes without a strike.[1]

In 1941, Taylor served as an impartial arbitrator between the United Auto Workers (UAW) and General Motors. During this time, he became close with UAW president Walter Reuther.[1]

Taylor entered federal service again in 1951. He left it in 1952, and although he continued to teach at the Wharton School he also was the official arbitrator of internal Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) jurisdictional disputes. He served in this capacity for three years, and his work became a model for handling inter-union disputes after the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and CIO merged in 1955.[5]

During his lifetime, Taylor was credited with coining a number of common collective bargaining terms, including "tandem," "escalator clause," "productivity improvement," "interplant inequity," and "ability to pay."[5]

Taylor was a strong advocate of private sector collective bargaining, but believed that governments had the right to significantly restrict collective bargaining and the right to strike in the public sector. He was a strong advocate of the National Labor Relations Act, and vehemently condemned the Taft-Hartley Act as poor public policy and an improper restriction on the right to strike. In 1933, Taylor was appointed chairman for the Philadelphia regional office of the National Labor Board. Later that year, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him assistant deputy administrator of the National Recovery Administration. Taylor left federal service in 1935, although he continued to serve as an advisor to the Fair Labor Standards Administration throughout the 1930s.[1]

President Roosevelt appointed Taylor vice chairman of the National War Labor Board in 1942. He became the board's chairman in 1945. In July 1942, Taylor wrote the wage decision popularly known as the "Little Steel formula" which gave workers employed by smaller steel companies only modest pay increases for the duration of the war.[6] The board applied the "Little Steel formula" to nearly every American industry during World War II. The decision was severely criticized by organized labor, but Taylor considered it to be one of the most significant, well-written, and well-founded policy decisions he ever made.[1][7]

President Harry S. Truman named Taylor secretary of the National Labor-Management Conference in 1946. The same year, Truman appointed Taylor chairman of the Advisory Board of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion. Taylor also served as a consultant to the Commission on Reorganization of the Executive Branch from 1948 to 1949.[1][2]

In 1951, Truman appointed Taylor director of the Wage Stabilization Board.[1][2][8]

During the steel strike of 1959, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Taylor chairman of the Presidential Board of Inquiry created when Eisenhower invoked the cooling-off provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act. Despite Taylor's role in helping Eisenhower win a court injunction stopping the strike for 90s days, Taylor became involved in helping end the strike. He assisted United Steelworkers of America counsel Arthur Goldberg and Kaiser Steel heir Edgar Kaiser negotiate an agreement which later formed the basis for the national collective bargaining agreement which settled the strike.[9]

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Taylor to the President's Advisory Committee on Labor Management Policy. During his tenure on the committee, Taylor helped craft a long-term contractual solution to a series of wildcat strikes which had plagued the aerospace industry since World War II. Taylor also resolved railroad disputes in 1964 and 1967, and in 1968 settled the long-running copper mining strike.[1]

In 1961, Taylor led a commission appointed by New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. which crafted a settlement that led to collective bargaining for teachers in New York City. The subsequent election led to the founding of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). In 1965, Taylor led a fact-finding board which the UFT used to win its first collective bargaining agreement with the city.[10]

But Taylor's most famous (and, according to New York state labor leaders, notorious) act as a public official was his role in crafting New York's "Taylor Law." In the wake of the formation of the UFT and (more immediately) a 1966 New York City transit strike, Governor Nelson Rockefeller appointed a Committee on Public Employment Relations to study the state's public employee collective bargaining laws. Taylor led the other five members of the panel in proposing new legislation which gave New York's public employees significantly stronger collective bargaining rights. On April 25, 1967, Gov. Rockefeller signed the Public Employees Fair Employment Act into law. Popularly known as the "Taylor Law," the Act is considered a model for public sector labor legislation. The law established collective bargaining rights for state-employed workers, and set up procedures and mechanisms for county and local public workers to establish unions and bargain collectively.[3][11]