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W. J. "Bill" Usery - a native of
Hardwick, Georgia - has spent almost four decades in labor-management
relations activity, having participated in hundreds of collective
bargaining disputes in a wide variety of private industries as well as
in the public sector. He is widely recognized as the nation's top
mediator.
Mr. Usery has held
five Presidential appointments, three of which required Senate
confirmation: Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Richard
Nixon, special assistant to the president for labor management
negotiations in two administrations, and Secretary of Labor under
President Gerald Ford. For three years, he was national director of the
Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, serving as the government's
chief mediator in every labor-management dispute of national
significance.
Under Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson, Mr. Usery 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. From
1993 to 1995, he served on the commission of the Future of
Worker-Management Relations and was appointed by President Bill Clinton
as special mediator for the major league baseball dispute.
In 1985, Mr. Usery
established the Bill Usery Labor Management Relations Foundation, for
the betterment of public awareness and understanding of labor-management
relations, collective bargaining, and other human resource issues in the
free enterprise system. In 1991, the Foundation helped create Partners
in Economic Reform, which is working with democratic labor and
management to promote economic development and free collective
bargaining in the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union.
Bill Usery
attended Georgia Military College and Mercer University and served in
the Pacific Fleet of the U.S. Navy during 1943-46. He has donated his
official papers to the Southern Labor Archives at Georgia State
University.
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