Labored Relations: Law, Politics and the NLRB by William B. Gould IV, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000, 449 pp., ISBN 0-262-07205-X (hc: alk. paper), 0-262-57155-2 (pbk).

The presidency of William Jefferson Clinton was launched amidst a flurry of reformist zeal. Health insurance and gays in the military attracted the highest public and media profiles but labour law reform also figured prominently among candidates for fundamental review. Like the top-billed issues, however, it did not sustain its early promise and little of the ambitious agenda was realized. Bill Gould’s Labored Relations, a memoir of the four and a half turbulent years he spent as Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, offers insights into the meagre outcome and, in a narrative laced with excerpts from his diaries and buttressed with extensive appendices, sets out a decidedly personal view of events and characters militating against more substantive achievements. William B. Gould IV, the great-grandson of a former slave and a life-long Democrat, is Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and a respected labour relations scholar. Gould asserts that his book is about “the relationship between law, a quasi-judicial administrative agency and politics in the volatile arena of labor policy.” He adds that it is also about “the balance of power between labor and management” and “the rule of law and the role of labor in the modern economy,” but it is the first of the three themes that dominates the text and that unintentionally, it is presumed, portrays a Chairman who contributes to and intensifies the volatility. At the time of his nomination to the NLRB Chairmanship in June, 1993, Gould’s views on reform of the National Labor Relations Act were already well known. Other writings and public utterances had identified his opinions on specific changes needed to address deficiencies in the Act and its interpretation, which he considers inhibit access to collective bargaining and contribute to the overall decline of the American labour movement. His reform list included such features as first contract arbitration, certification based on signed cards and restrictions on permanent replacement workers. These were the kinds of issue, together with procedural reforms such as more readily exercised injunctive relief, the formulation of NLRB rules based on well trodden jurisprudence and expedited case-management practices, which Gould hoped to pursue during his term of office. Labored Relations chronicles his attempts to do so, relates his modest successes and, most often, rails against the institutional roadblocks he encountered and the personal opposition he frequently provoked. Gould makes solid cases for several of the reforms he champions. Virtually none of the substantive changes he supports would trouble Canadian practitioners. Despite the practical nature of many of Gould’s suggestions, few were implemented during his chairmanship. He attributes the lack of progress to political and institutional factors and also blames colleagues for perceived professional and personal weaknesses. The political and business climates were not propitious. Incipient anti-union sentiments blossomed in the Reagan and Bush Sr. years and union avoidance emerged as a subset of management consultancy. By recalling that the NLRA “declares the practice and procedure of collective bargaining to be the public policy of the United States,” Gould incurred the wrath of such bodies as the National Right to Work Committee and the Labor Policy Association and invited vehement and sustained opposition from Republican ranks in Congress. That opposition first manifested itself in his confirmation proceedings lasting more than eight months. It intensified after the Republicans took control of both the Senate and the House in 1995, leading to acrimonious appropriation hearings and delayed confirmation of Board appointees. Within the Board, Gould was frustrated by statutory provisions that do not accord the Chairman authority to manage the caseload and that place responsibility for the vast majority of …