Another more informal and less used practice existed in which less experienced individuals were hired who were viewed as having the potential to develop into a good mediator after an intern period of growth.

The following individuals were hired as interns or hired below the usual entry grade of GS12. They each would have their own unique hiring and training experience.

No further information was available from FMCS.

My intern experience in the National Office in 1964 was so unplanned and left to my own imitative that I was able to spend hours in Old Department of Labor Library[1] where I learned about the USCS and the early history of FMCS. When I was transferred to Milwaukee, I carried a box of history material that I had copied in the DOL Library. That boxful became the beginning of my collection now at George Washington University covering 136 shelve feet.

After five years in Milwaukee, I left FMCS to head an office in DOL for three years where my boss reported to Bill Usery. I did several things that got Bill’s attention, which I wrote about elsewhere. When Bill was appointed FMCS Director, he asked me to return to FMCS to head a new office of Technical Services. After he described the functions of the new office, he asked me if I had one thing I would like to accomplish at FMCS. I told Bill I would like to develop an intern program that would recruit, hire and train younger, minorities and female mediators.

Usery, always fond of new ideas, agreed. The result of that agreement was:

Two mediator intern classes in 1975.

First Class: January 1975[2]

1st Row: George Buckingham (Became National Deputy Director), Bonnie Castrey (Left to became an arbitrator),

Ernie Bremer (not in photo)

2nd Row: Jim Schepker (Became a Manager in Chicago RO), Julie Greer (started mediation program for school kids),

John Knight (Served in numerous field offices), John Healy (Died young)

Second Class: July 1975[3]

1st Row: Eileen Hoffman (Became General Counsel and other N.O positions),  Bob Stiener (Served in several field and NO positions)

2nd Row: Jerry McKay (Left to become an arbitrator), John Steppe (Became Deputy Assistant Secretary in DOL),

 Chris Merchant (Wrote a book, became a professor)

3rd Row: Lois Vanderwaerdt (resigned), Mike Nowakowski (Long service in Detroit), Ron Sweet (Served in Milwaukee),

Doug Hammond (Manager in Seattle RO)

The case can be made that hiring five women mediator interns in 1975 opened the door for more women to join FMCS. Here is what happened:

Twenty-one years after its creation in 1947, FMCS hired the first women mediator in 1968. Ten women mediators were hired at normal entry level between 1975 and 1977. In the 1980s, twelve more women were hired, and in the 1990s, twenty-one more were hired.

By 2016, four of the ten FMCS Regional Offices were headed by a woman, the General Counsel and the Director were both women. In that year, twenty-eight percent of the 165 FMCS mediator staff were women.

In 2022 both Regional Directors (Beth Schindler and Carolyn Brommer), and three of the eight District Directors Linda Gonzalez, Jennifer Disotell, and Barbara Rumph) are female.

[1] At the time, the FMCS National Office was in the old DOL at 14^th and Constitution NW.

[2] Oral history interviews recorded of George Buckingham, Bonnie Castrey, and John Knight by Jerry Barrett.

[3] Oral history interviews recorded of Eileen Hoffman, Chris Merchant, Bob Stiencer and John Stepp by Jerry Barrett.

In 1953, David with two other very junior mediators in the Detroit office wrote a historic document that named and described 120 mediation techniques. Their document was titled: “The Federal Mediator: his responsibilities, functions and techniques.” It can be found on my website (mediationhistory.org) under Documents and then FMCS History.

Some retired mediators will remember David’s “Nine Dots Exercise?” David used it to challenge parties to think outside the box. He’d put nine dots on flip chart in three rows of three dots. Then he’d ask participants to draw a continuous line through all the dots with no more that four angles in the line. Most participants would draw their line through dots on the edge and miss the center dot. Finally, David would demonstrate how to include all nine dots by going outside the box.

David had a lot of truisms about mediation that he liked to share with new mediators. Here’s one I remember: The receiver is the key: you must communicate with the receiver in a manner the receiver can understand.

David was the first mediator I heard talk about a 360 degree mediator, which meant a mediator who does the entire mediator job – mediating dispute, but also preventive mediation, that is helping labor and management during the term of the labor agreement to solve problems and improve their relationship.

David told me a few months before he died that a Detroit labor lawyer named Rodger Webb had been interviewing him on Sunday afternoons for months about his career. I helped Webb get copies of my interviews of David. Webb plans to write something on David. I hope readers in Detroit alert me when he does.

It is probably no surprise to anyone who knew David that my longest recorded interview in one sitting was David’s interview, eight 90-minute cassettes. He was a talker.

Before retiring from FMCS, David founded the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution (SPIDR)[2], an early organization of labor-management dispute resolvers.

After retiring from FMCS, he began a new career as an arbitrator, becoming a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators, as well as Chair of the Michigan Employment Relations Commission.

[1] Detroit Jewish News (February 2015). David was a very religious man and was a Cantor in his Synagogue.

[2] SPIDR merged with The Association of Conflict Rresolution.

Major Estes

Lou Towers (Standing Center)

Charles Tiltan

USCS conciliators (mediators) were not writers, and certainly not writers for publication. The same could be said for the early years of FMCS. Major Charles Estes[1] was an exception, having served with both USCS and FMCS, he researched, wrote, trained and mediated.

Here are samples of his writing:

“The Place of Communications in Maintaining Labor-Management Peace.” Southern Speech Journal, March 1949. (In this publication, Estes is listed as Special Assistant to the FMCS Director.)

“Communications in Industry”, Journal of Communications. Nov. 1951, Special Assistant to FMCS Director, and Consulting Chairman to the Committee on Communications in Industry.

“Speech and Human Relations In Industry.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. XXXII, No. 2. April 1946.

“Speech and Human Relations in Industry“  a 14 page, double spaced typed paper, undated. Under his name are these words: ‘USCS of DoL. Estes outlines a process for conciliation that has the parties reading out-loud to each other, with steps that increase the parties opportunity to discuss issues as they read. The paper ends with this quote: “The ability to steer people into believing that the solution is the result of their own thinking is a most necessary technique in the difficult art of conciliation.”

“Some Steps to Help Union Committeemen and Shop Foremen in the Art of Getting Along with Each Other.” This lengthy document is a very detailed plan for instructing labor and management in better communications and peaceful relations. The process facilitated the parties to jointly read the labor agreement to develop a joint understanding of the meaning of the agreement. This program was produced during the late USCS period before 1947.

MA Dissertation Based Estes’ Work

“Preliminary Investigation of a Procedure for Conditioning of Discussion” An MA Dissertation by George Liston Tatum, June 1948, Northwestern University. Tatum wrote in his introduction: “It is a pleasure to acknowledge first my indebtedness to Major Charles T. Estes, former commissioner of the USCS, now Special Assistant to the Secretary of Labor. Not only is the basic procedure under investigation his, but he has been more than generous with his time and energy in “interviews” or better, “talks” for the past two years.”

Tatum also thanked several mediators: Major James P. Holmes, Thomas J. Cleland, Walter P Monroe, and “especially, Mr. Lewis C. Towers, assistant to Major Estes .

George Liston Tatum eventually earned a PhD in semantics and became a college professor. Interestingly, semantics was a favorite topic of Major Estes.

[1] Estes had been a major in the U.S. Army.