A Heart for People-Even in Negotiation

Abstract

W. J. Usery, Jr., served as US Secretary of Labor in President Gerald R. Ford’s administration in 1976. Prior to holding this office. Mr. Usery held three Presidential appointments: Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Richard Nixon and Special Assistant to the President for Labor Management Negotiations in two administrations. He also held the office of National Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, serving as the government’s chief mediator in labor-management disputes of national significance.Mr. Usery is widely known as the “nation’s super mediator,” participating in hundreds of collective bargaining disputes in a wide variety of private industries, as well as in the public sector. Under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, he was the industrial union representative on the President’s Missile Sites Labor Committee at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.Mr. Usery was Founder and Chairman of the Usery Center for the Workplace at Georgia State University(GSU) and in 2004, was named as the Distinguished Executive Fellow in Labor Policy at GSU. The W. J.Usery Chair of American Workplace was established in his honor and is held by Professor Barry Hirsch.