The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 removed labor-management mediation from the Department of Labor (DoL) and placed it in the newly created Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). Not everyone favored the new arrangement. Labor Secretary Lewis Schwellerbach urged Congress to return the mediation function to DoL. In Congressional testimony, the first FMCS Director Cyrus Ching favored the mediation function being in an independent agency such as FMCS. President Truman’s 1948 Democratic Platform favored the DoL position.
As the first FMCS Director, Ching took over the offices and staff of DoL’s United States Conciliation Service (USCS), which included the office of the last Director of USCS. That office was located next to the Secretary of Labor on mahogany row in DoL headquarters. FMCS Director Whitney McCoy (7-53 to 11-54) found that location uncomfortable and inappropriate for an independent agency head. He also objected to being told to attend the Secretary’s staff meetings with the Assistant Secretaries of Labor.
This antidote illustrates the problem: All offices on mahogany row had large outer office for staff. When the Secretary wanted to talk to the Director face to face, he had to leave his office, walk through his outer office, down the hallway, through the outer office and into the Director’s office. Bothered by this inconvenience when he wanted an update on a labor dispute, the Secretary ordered that a door be made in the common wall between their offices so the Director would be only “a holler away” from the Secretary.
When Director McCoy’s problem reached the White House, McCoy was asked to resign, and the Secretary selected a more compatible Director, Joseph Finnegan, who had been the Secretary’s lawyer in New York City when they were both in the private sector.
Such a problem would not have occurred for Director Ching since at the White House was Assistant to the President John Steelman, who had been Director of USCS, and had urged President Truman to appoint Ching FMCS Director.
But one White House problem that might have distressed Ching was Steelman willingness, actually eagerness, to mediate major national disputes rather than allowing Ching to handle them. This upstaging of FMCS occurred with other Labor Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries who wanted to mediate big headline grabbing disputes. That was the case with Bill Usery as Assistant Secretary Labor for Labor-Management Relations. He effectively put a stop to that practice when he became FMCS Director, but when he later became Secretary of Labor, he likely reconsidered that.
