Harry Alvin Millis (May 14, 1873 - June 25, 1948) was an American civil servant, economist and educator and prominent in the first four decades of the 20th century. He is a prominent educator, and his writings on employment are described in his death by some prominent economists as "landmarks". Millis is best known for serving on the "first" National Labor Relations Council, an executive branch agency that has no legal authority. He is also the second chairman of the "second" National Labor Relations Board, where he initiated a number of procedural improvements and helped stabilize American labor law enforcement.
Video Harry A. Millis
Kehidupan awal
Millis was born in May 1873 in Paoli, Indiana. He attended and graduated from Paoli High School. He was deeply involved in athletics in his youth. He enrolled at Indiana University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1895 and a Master of Arts in finance in 1896. He was the first graduate student of John R. Commons, a renowned institutional economist. Millis entered the sociology program at the University of Chicago in 1896 but in 1898 he switched to an economics program and received his Ph.D. in the economy in 1899.
From 1899 to 1902 he became a reference librarian at John Crerar's Library, a private, independent public library, focusing on research and teaching in science, medicine and technology. In 1901, he married former Alice May Schoff. The couple has three children: a son, John, and two daughters, Savilla and Charlotte. Alice received a law degree from the University of Cincinnati and a Master of Philosophy from the University of Michigan. He left his position at the Crerar Library in 1902 to become professor of economics and sociology at the University of Arkansas. He taught there for only two years. He joined the faculty at Stanford University in 1904 after being appointed assistant professor of economics. While at Stanford, he became friends with controversial economist Thorstein Veblen, and helped Veblen and his wife find housing on campus. While at Stanford, he met and became friends with the nationally known economists Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman and Thomas Sewall Adams, and in 1907 founded the National Tax Association (a nonpartisan organization that encourages the study of tax theory, tax policy, and other areas of public finance). In 1908, he published the article "Business and Professional Taxes as Local Income Sources" in the Political Economy Journal. The article makes a case for taxes on professionals and businesses as a means to expand taxes. basing and avoiding excessive dependence on property taxes. Simeon E. Leland, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Northwestern University and chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, later said it was a landmark in the study of state tax issues and anticipated later, works better known by Seligman and Adams. Millis left Stanford in 1911 and in the fall of 1912 joined the economics department at the University of Kansas.
Millis joined the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1916 as an assistant professor of economics. He was appointed chair of the department in 1928, and became Professor Emeritus in 1938 at the age of 65 years. He became associated with "institutional economics" schools, whose main supporters then taught at the University of Chicago. Between 1938 and 1945, he and Royal E. Montgomery of Cornell University co-authored a three-volume study entitled The Economics of Labor. At the time of his death, a group of prominent economists called it "the most authoritative and comprehensive analysis of the modern labor economy for a closed period." He followed this with How Collective Working Negotiations in 1942, a text set the pattern for case studies in the field of industrial relations.
Maps Harry A. Millis
Public services
Millis is a believer in "practical" economics and working relationships, the idea that an academic should not only learn from afar but must actively participate in his subject practice. Thus, Millis agreed to serve on a number of councils, commissions, and public agencies throughout her life. He served as a staff economist and field investigator for the US Immigration Commission from 1908 to 1910, studied Asian immigration on the West Coast and in the Rocky Mountains countries and wrote a three-volume report on the subject. He was director of the Illinois Health Insurance Commission from 1918 to 1919, where he oversaw the country's first large-scale effort to collect health statistics, assess citizens' health, study the application of health legislation, and make policy recommendations on health insurance..
From 1919 to 1921, he was chairman of the Board of Trade of the Chicago Men's Clothing Industry, where he helped mediate labor disputes in the textile industry. He was chairman of the Trade Arbitration Committee from 1923 to 1924 and again from 1937 to 1940.
"First" NLRB
In 1934, Millis was appointed a member of the "first" National Labor Relations Council. On June 16, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) into law. Title I, Section 7 (a) of the Act guarantees workers the right to form trade unions, and it triggers a massive wave of union organizers interrupted by employers and trade union violence, general strikes, and recognition strikes. Although perceived by Section 7 (a) to self-policing, the assumption fails almost immediately. On August 5, 1933, President Roosevelt announced that the National Recovery Administration was ordered to establish a National Labor Council (NLB) to administer Section 7 (a). (Millis served as deputy chairman of the NLB office in Chicago.) But the NLB had no effective effect without legal or regulatory force, so Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6511 on December 16, 1933, to strengthen the NLB and give it power of executive authority. But this, too, proved too little to deal with the tremendous labor relations problems facing the country. Finally, threatened with a major strike in the steel industry and the Senate employment bill moves forward without presidential input, Roosevelt personally drew up Public Resolution # 1. 44, a bill authorizing the president to create one or more new labor councils to enforce Section 7 (A) by conducting investigations, summons and witnesses, holding elections, and issuing orders. It passed the two Congressional assemblies on June 16, and Roosevelt signed it into law on June 19, 1934. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6073 on June 29, 1934, which eliminated the NLB and formed the National Labor Relations Board. The three-person board is empowered to hold hearings and make fact finding, investigate violations of Section 7 (a), and organize union organizing elections to resolve labor disputes. Millis expressed no interest in serving in NLRB. Nonetheless, he was asked to join a new council based on his national reputation as an arbitrator, and agreed to do so. Millis was sworn in as the "first" NLRB member on July 9, 1934.
Millis plays a role in keeping the "first" independent NLRB. The 36-year-old NRLB chairman, Lloyd K. Garrison, has agreed to serve as chairman only to get the board up and running, and he resigned on October 2, 1934, to continue his position as dean of the University of Wisconsin. School law. Garrison suggested instead of an old friend, Francis Biddle, a prominent Philadelphia lawyer. Biddle was appointed to the post on November 16. Labor Minister Frances Perkins, however, has long sought to assert his department's control of the NLRB, but Garrison and Perkins reached an informal agreement that preserves the independence of the NLRB. However, with Garrison leaving, Perkins sought to cancel this agreement. He secretly met with President Roosevelt and secured a change in the executive order that appointed Biddle to the NLRB which placed the agency entirely under his control. Millis studied the content of the executive order and warned Biddle. Biddle confronts Perkins a few hours before the curse, and Perkins agrees to hold that order until he, Biddle, and the president can meet. Roosevelt then agreed that his orders were inappropriate, and told Biddle that he would not cancel the order but he would not enforce it (personally guaranteeing NLRB's independence).
Millis impressed his colleagues about the "first" NLRB. Garrison called him highly experienced, with excellent judgment and common sense. Biddle says Millis educated him about the history of the labor movement, and called Millis cautious, thoughtful, wise, and cheerful. Millis is, Biddle said, "very conscious of the injustices that labor efforts have made to organize, although at the same time aware of the dangerous weaknesses in many labor leadership: not only extortion and feather-blankets, but lack of imagination, insistence on increased wages and hours as the only goal, jealousy little jurisdiction and quarrel... "
Millis plays a major role in maintaining the "first" NLRB jurisdiction as well. On June 18, 1934, the National Labor Council confirmed the jurisdiction over labor disputes in the Call-Bulletin, a newspaper in San Francisco, California. Although the National Labor Council was dissolved two weeks later, the first "NRRB" affirmed continued jurisdiction over the dispute. At a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 13, 1934, the lawyer for the newspaper confirmed that NIRA granted exclusive jurisdiction over all industrial newspaper labor disputes to the Newspaper Industrial Board (NIB). NIB is a body formed by the Healthy Competition Code for the Business of Daily Newspaper Publishing, a "fair trade" code established under the authority of NIRA and approved by President Roosevelt. If the NLRB is subject to the interpretation of the newspaper, it will basically submit all its authority to the National Recovery Administration (NRA), with which it is already locked in the jurisdictional struggle. In contrast, the NLRB decided to challenge the NRA's claim of authority over all labor disputes within the industry covered by the NIRA code. On 3 December 1934, Millis and other NLRB members issued a public statement stating that NIRA granted the NRA no exclusive jurisdiction over labor disputes, and pointed out that because the NIB has stalled on all major issues before the NLRB will enter. NRA's advisory chief Donald Richberg angrily supports NIB and the newspaper industry, and challenges the claims of NLRB jurisdiction. The dispute between the NRA and the NLRB threatened to lead to the collapse of the NRA's Advisory Board, and the automobile, rubber, steel and textile industries threatened to withdraw from their respective industry codes. After the NLRB decided to support the Call-Bulletin workers in December 1934, the NRA refused to enforce the decision. Unfortunately, President Roosevelt issued a letter on January 22, 1935, requesting that the NLRB reject jurisdiction in a small number of NIRA codes and ask the NLRB to send any recommendations made in such a dispute in secret to the president. The next day, Millis, Biddle, and NLRB members Edwin S. Smith agreed to challenge the president in jurisdictional matters. Millis and Smith even threatened to resign, leading to the collapse of the NLRB, if Roosevelt insisted on enforcing his letter on January 22. Millis, Biddle, and Smith met with the President a few days later. Roosevelt agreed not to enforce his letter, authorized the NLRB investigation into the operation of the Newspaper Industry Council, and wrote letters to NLRB members and staff who promised not to engage in other jurisdictional matters. Roosevelt also explained that he wanted the NLRB to avoid a dispute in the politically sensitive automotive industry. However, although the letter to NRLB was issued, Roosevelt insisted it was not published (so it would not appear as if he had withdrawn from the previous announcement).
Millis was not in the "first" NLRB for a long time. Senator Robert F. Wagner continues to push for a comprehensive federal employment law. The bill, which became the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), was adopted by Congress on 27 June 1935, and signed into law by President Roosevelt on 5 July. Millis, who wanted to return to his home in Chicago, resigned from NLRB Shortly after part of the NLRA and succeeded in the Council by John M. Carmody. Even when he left the Board, Millis successfully recommended David J. Saposs as Chief Economist to lead the new NLRB Economic Research Division.
Service between NLRBs
Millis returns to the University of Chicago. One of his students today is Oliver Cox, an African American who later became a famous economist. In 1937, he was appointed a member of the Illinois Commission for Unemployment and President Roosevelt appointed him to a Railway Trafficking seeker body in a dispute between the Chicago Great Western Railway and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. The railway panel found that trains should not impose a 15 percent wage reduction on workers. Roosevelt appointed him to the second railway panel in 1938 to mediate a dispute between millions of members of the Railway Workers Executive Association (an umbrella group representing 18 railroad workers organizations) and the American Railroad Association (representing all long-distance trains in the United States). In 1940, he sat in a third arbitration panel that settled a longstanding wage dispute between the American Railway Express and his union.
In 1940, President Roosevelt asked Millis to become a permanent referee between General Motors (GM) and United Auto Workers (UAW). The 1937 collective bargaining agreement between the company and the union established a temporary voluntary arbitration procedure, made permanent in the 1940 contract. This is the first permanent arbitration mechanism in the mass production industry, and not just unions but many companies and politicians who want to see it succeed. Some of President Roosevelt's aides and believers urged Millis to accept the position. She agreed. However, Millis rejected the large salary offered to him, and instead only took the same moderate salary he received at the university. Although he only became an arbitrator for several months, he laid the foundation for a smooth working relationship not only at General Motors but set patterns for arbitrage scattered throughout the manufacturing sector of the economy.
Finally, in March 1940, Millis joined the Collective Bargaining Advisers, a private group dedicated to promoting peaceful employment through "scientific" practice.
NLRB chairman
Millis has been a GM-UAW arbitrator only a few months when he was asked to become chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.
Appointment
For more than two years, the NLRB was under heavy political pressure, and its chairman, J. Warren Madden, was seen as a political responsibility. The Board has issued three decisions ( Fansteel Metallurgical , 5 NLRB 930 (1938); Steel Outback , 9 NLRB No. 73 (1938), and Republic Steel , 9 NLRB No. 33 (1938)) in 1938 which attracted widespread criticism from certain businesses and Congress members. The council won ( In the Labor Council again , 304 US 486 (1938)) and then lost ( Ford Motor Co. v. NLRB , 305 US 364 (1939)) case before The Supreme Court on its internal decision-making process. And in three cases in 1939 ( National Labor Relations Board v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corp. , 306 US 240 (1939); National Labor Relations Board v. Columbian Enameling & Stamping Co. 306 US 292 (1939), and National Labor Relations Board v. Sands Manufacturing Co. 306 US 332 (1939)) The Supreme Court castrated the Council's efforts to use Section 10 expansively ( g)) of the NLRA to promote collective bargaining and peace of employment. Media and public opinion are changing strongly against what is perceived as an overriding NLRB, and President Roosevelt announces the establishment of a commission to study Board operations. In March 1939, 11 bills had been filed in Congress to amend the NLRA. The House of Representatives voted to form a special committee, the Special Committee to Investigate the National Labor Relations Board (known as the "Smith Committee" after its chairman, conservative Democrat Rep. Howard W. Smith), in July 1939. The Smith Committee was substantially biased against trade unions and NLRB, received testimony from hundreds of witnesses, conducted a national survey on the impact of the NLRB, and questioned NLRB officials at length about the alleged anti-business institutions and the anti-American/pro-Congress Industry Organizational Reform Federation. Nathan Witt, Secretary of the Council (and high career officials), also received criticism from the Smith Committee for his communist sympathies. The Smith Committee proposes legislation to substantially alter the NLRA. Legislation easily passed the House, but was bottled by Roosevelt's ally in the Senate and died. The administrative dispute of the Council has even divided the NLRB itself. Board members William S. Leiserson and Edwin S. Smith were at loggerheads (Leiserson accused Smith of being biased towards manpower and CIO in particular), and Leiserson threatened to stop if Madden was reappointed. The Roosevelt government now regarded Madden as a political responsibility, and decided to replace it.
NLRB chairman J. Warren Maddden at the Council ended on August 27, 1940. President Roosevelt, campaigning for re-election, refused to mention Madden's successor until the election was over. Senator Wagner and Roosevelt trustee and labor leader, Sidney Hillman, both proposed Millis to the president. After the election, Roosevelt personally contacted Millis and asked him to become Chairman of the NLRB. Millis then said, "I was dragged into the job by the President, I am definitely not a candidate for the Council, let alone chairman." The word leaked from Millis's appointment on November 6, a day after the election. His nomination was officially announced on 14 November. The media said that Millis's nomination was intended to replace the "radical" majority in the Council with the only "liberal". Millis appointment has a direct effect. Witt immediately resigned. David Saposs, also under fire for alleged communist beliefs, left the Council on October 11 after Congress overthrew his office. Millis was confirmed by the Senate on 26 November. Thomas I. Emerson, head of the NLRB Review Division, resigned the next day - on the same day that Millis was sworn in as NLRB Chairman.
Changes are institutionalized on Board
Millis implements significant administrative changes in the NLRB. The goal is to bring the NLRB out of the limelight after the Smith Committee's investigations. He deliberately made NLRB more dependent on Congress and the executive branch for its survival.
Millis allied with Leiserson against Edwin S. Smith, and made extensive changes in the administration, doctrine, personnel, and operations of the NLRB. Smith strongly criticized this change, but Millis replied that Smith refused to discuss this change or participate in the Council's decision that made them and thus deprived of his right to criticize. Millis disarmed the Secretary's office from all his powers and never filled a position, formed the Administration Division to oversee 22 regional offices, began studies on the administrative procedures of the Council, and completely delegated power to regional offices. He appoints Robert Watts as the agency's new chief advisor, removes the handling of cases and communications of regional offices from the jurisdiction of the Secretary's Office, creates the Field Division, delegates large amounts of authority to field offices, and generally implements internal recommendations from 1939 staff reports stopped by Chairman Madden because it would take authority from Witt's hands). He also adopted most of the recommendations made by William Leiserson on how the Board made its decisions, which included basing decisions on court examiner reports, authorizing NLRB reviewers to review each report, making decisions for review, authorizing review lawyers to revise the draft before a final decision is issued, altering the court examiner's report to emphasize the fact finding and to support legal points, and holding a Council conference when there is a difference of opinion on the decision. He also omitted the determinant role of the Review Division in cases, which had been established under Madden and Witt. Madden and Witt have adopted a highly centralized Board structure so that (in general) only the most favorable cases for the Council are brought to justice. The centralized structure means that only the strongest cases are given to the Council itself, in which the Council can apply all its economic and legal powers to make the best possible decisions. This strategy has enabled the Council to defend itself so well in the presence of the Supreme Court, that the Court upholds the NLRA when few expect it to do so. But Madden and Witt have maintained a centralized strategy for too long, and made political enemies in the process. Millis dismantled Madden's centralized process that has been used to win court litigation, and replaces the decentralization process in which the Council lacks decision makers and more service providers to the region. Much of Millis's changes are designed to replicate the requirements placed on other institutions by the Administrative Procedure Act.
Millis's partnership with Leiserson also nullified a number of more radical NLRB precedents and established a more moderate labor policy. Where the Madden Board has issued a broad decision that approves multi-crop residents in the Pacific Coast Shipowners' Association <7>, 7 NLRB 1002 (1938) and Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Company , 10 NLRB 1470 (1939) (preferred decision of industrial union such as CIO), Millis worked with Leiserson to cancel this precedent in the Pacific Coast Shipowners Association, 32 NLRB 668 (1941) and Libbey-Owens Ford , 31 NLRB 243 (1942). The Millis-led council also issued a number of decisions that changed the bar on a representation petition during the term of the contract into a tool to ensure the security of an incumbent union. Although the Madden Board was held at A. Sartorious , 10 NLRB 403 (1938), the problem solver was not eligible to participate in the election of union organizing, the Millis Council voted at Rudolph Wurlitzer Co. , 32, NLRB 163 (1941) to cancel that precedent. The Madden Board was held at Inland Steel, 9 NLRB 783 (1938) that a company was responsible for the actions of its foreman, but the Millis Council overturned this decision at Joseph E. Seagram & amp; Sons, Inc. , 32 NLRB 1056 (1941). The Madden Board has several times ruled that an employer may be held guilty of NLRA violations regardless of circumstances, but in New York and Porto Rico SS Co., 34 NLRB 1028 (1941), Millis- The board of directors says that the employer is acquitted of guilt if forced to act under union economic pressure. This and other important decisions by the Millis Council are strongly approved by the Perkins Secretary of Labor and President Roosevelt.
Not all changes in the NLRB deepened Millis's control of the Council. When Edwin S. Smith's term ended in August 1941, Millis wrote to Roosevelt and suggested William Hammatt Davis (Deputy Administrator of the NRA), lawyer (and then Senator) Wayne Morse, Professor George W. Taylor, and economist Edwin E. Witte as Substitute Smith. Perkins secretary suggested Gerard D. Reilly, a lawyer at the Department of Labor. Reilly won Roosevelt's approval. Reilly, however, was very conservative and adopted a legalistic approach to labor law, and Millis and many others at the NRLB regarded him as a reactionary. Reilly believes Millis is too influenced by Chief Trial Examiner, Frank Bloom (left wing lawyer) and Oscar Smith, head of the Field Division. Millis argues that Reilly's legalism disrupts a "realistic" work relationship, and that he is too willing to impose his conservative views on national employment policy just as Madden and Smith have imposed their liberal view.
Leadership during World War II
The United States entered World War II on December 8, 1941, and the war significantly changed the NRLB and Millis tenure as chairman.
On 12 January 1942, President Roosevelt created the National War Working Council (NWLB), whose existence replaced the NLRB as the primary focus of federal employment during the war. The NWLB was authorized to "ultimately determine" any labor disputes that threaten to disrupt war production, and to stabilize union wages and benefits during the war. Although Roosevelt instructed the NWLB not to interfere with the jurisdiction of the NLRB, the Labor Council of the War refused to honor this request. But Millis is not good at bureaucratic maneuvers, and does not understand that press attention can help him win battles with the NWLB. Over the next three years, Millis attempted to secure the agreement of jurisdiction with NWLB chairman George W. Taylor, but this discussion proved fruitless and Millis broke up in June 1945. The NWLB also greatly invaded NLRB for staff, significantly affecting Millis's ability to ensure operations NLRB. From July 1942 to October 1943, the NLRB lost more than 150 staff, including several regional directors, to the Labor Council of War.
Additional changes came with the passage of the War Labor Dispute Act on June 25, 1943. Applicable to Roosevelt's veto after 400,000 coal miners, their wages declined significantly due to high inflation war, were attacked for a $ 2 per day wage increase, whenever unions threatened strike, the law requires NLRB (in part) to produce a ballot that outlines all collective bargaining proposals and a counter-proposal, waits 30 days, and then holds a sound strike. The War Workers Disputes Act proved to be very burdensome. The NLRB processed 2,000 WLDA cases from 1943 to the end of 1945, of which 500 were strikes. However, the strike action procedure did not succeed in stopping the strike, 203 strike votes taken in 1944 caused the strike, and Millis worried unions using a referendum to whip pro-strike feelings among their members. Millis also believes that the process of legal voice strike actually allows more strikes to occur than NLRBs allowed under the old procedure. There were so many voting strikes within six months of the end of the war that the NLRB completely shut down long-distance calls, canceled all out-of-town trips, stopped all public hearings, and stopped all other attempts to accommodate the workload.
Additional Board change personnel were further moderated by the NLRB during the term of the Mailing List. John Mills Houston was appointed a member of the Council in 1943 after William S. Leiserson's term ended and Leiserson did not seek re-appointment to his agency. Millis formed a voting alliance with Houston some time in late 1944. Regardless of this alliance, Millis sometimes can not form a majority in the Council. He strongly disagrees in American News Company, Inc. 552 (1944), a decision in which the Council declared that the protesters were not protected from dismissal or rejection of the recovery if they were beaten for illegal reasons. Millis feared this would generate an unclear test of "objective legality" that the Board had rejected for so long.
In early 1945, Millis was ill. He resigned from the NLRB on June 7, 1945. His replacement was Paul M. Herzog.
Retirement and death
In the fall of 1945, Millis returned to the University of Chicago. He became senior adviser to the newly established Industrial Relations Center, and (along with former student Emily Clark Brown) embarked on a major analysis of federal labor policy. Their written work, From the Wagner Act to Taft Hartley: A Study of National Labor Policies and Labor Relations, was just completed when he died.
Millis has been critical of the Council in his last years. The Madden Board has been held at American Can Co. , 13 NLRB 1252 (1939) that smaller craft unions should not be created if there is a history of industrial union negotiations with the employer. Although Millis was critical of American Can's decision, she rarely allowed her to be violated during her tenure at the Council. He brought his successor Paul Herzog to the task of repeatedly violating American Can's doctrine between 1945 and 1947. He also criticized the Council of Herzog for being too dependent on Congress for delaying decisions for political reasons, and for allowing consultations with interested parties to appear too much like undue influence He also criticized Herzog for being overly cautious and not upholding the NLRA strongly enough.
Millis was a member of numerous associations during his lifetime. He is a longtime member of the American Economic Association, serving as its president from 1934 to 1935. He is also a member of the Chicago Bibliographic Society, director of the National Economic Research Bureau, founder and director of the Agricultural Economic Foundation, and member of the Council for Social Science and Cosmos Club Studies.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments