Arbitration, in the context of the law of the United States, is a form of alternative dispute resolution. Specifically, arbitration is an alternative to litigation through which the parties to a dispute agree to submit their respective evidence and legal arguments to a neutral third party for resolution. In practice arbitration is generally used as a substitute for litigation, particularly when the judicial process is perceived as too slow, expensive or biased. In some contexts, an arbitrator may be described as an umpire.
The American Arbitration Association (AAA) is a not-for-profit organization in the field of alternative dispute resolution, providing services to individuals and organizations who wish to resolve conflicts out of court, and one of several arbitration organizations that administers arbitration proceedings. The AAA also administers mediation through www.AAAMediation.org and other forms of alternative dispute resolution. It is headquartered in New York City, with regional offices in Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, East Providence, Rhode Island, Fresno, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Somerset, New Jersey and Washington, DC.
The United Transportation Union (UTU) was a broad-based, transportation labor union that represented about 70,000 active and retired railroad, bus, mass transit, and airline workers in the United States. The UTU was headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. On August 11, 2014, it merged with the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association (SMWIA) to form the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, known by the acronym SMART.
John Thomas Dunlop was an American administrator, labor economist, and educator. Dunlop was the United States Secretary of Labor between 1975 and 1976 under President Gerald Ford. He was Director of the United States Cost of Living Council from 1973 to 1974, Chairman of the United States Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations from 1993 to 1995, which produced the Dunlop Report in 1994. He was also arbitrator and impartial chairman of various United States labor-management committees, and a member of numerous government boards on industrial relations disputes and economic stabilization.
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), founded in 1947, is an independent agency of the United States government, and the nation's largest public agency for dispute resolution and conflict management, providing mediation services and related conflict prevention and resolution services in the private, public, and federal sectors. FMCS is tasked with mediating labor disputes around the country; it provides training and relationship development programs for management and unions as part of its role in promoting labor-management peace and cooperation. The Agency also provides mediation, conflict prevention, and conflict management services outside the labor context for federal agencies and the programs they operate. The FMCS headquarters is located in Washington, D.C. with other offices across the country.
The National Academy of Arbitrators (NAA) is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) honorary and professional organization of labor arbitrators in the United States and Canada that was founded in 1947. Its avowed purpose was “to foster the highest standards of integrity, competence, honor and character among those engaged in the arbitration of industrial disputes.” Under the Academy’s stringent rules, only the most active and well-respected practitioners can be elected to membership, along with scholars who have made significant contributions to the field of labor law and relations. The Academy’s roughly 600 members cannot serve as advocates or consultants in labor disputes, associate with firms that perform those functions, or serve as expert witnesses on behalf of labor or management. Their interest is in the betterment of a fair and impartial arbitration process.
The Martin P. Catherwood Library, commonly known as the Catherwood Library or simply the ILR Library, serves the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. One of over a dozen libraries within the Cornell University Library system, the Catherwood Library is considered the most comprehensive resource of its kind in North America. The Catherwood Library's stated mission is to serve as a comprehensive information center in support of the research, instruction, and service commitments of the Industrial and Labor Relations School and Cornell community. The Catherwood Library is an official Depository Library of the International Labour Organization (ILO), one of only two in the country to be so designated; the other is the Library of Congress.
George W. Taylor was a notable professor of industrial relations at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and is credited with founding the academic field of study known as industrial relations. He served in several capacities in the federal government, most notably as a mediator and arbitrator. During his career, Taylor settled more than 2,000 strikes.
Benjamin Aaron was an American attorney, labor law scholar and civil servant. He is known for his work as an arbitrator and mediator, and for helping to advance the development of the field of comparative labor law in the United States.
Frank E. A. Sander was a professor emeritus and Associate Dean of Harvard Law School. Professor Sander graduated from Harvard College with a degree in mathematics in 1949 and from Harvard Law School in 1952. Professor Sander pioneered in the field of alternative dispute resolution and is widely credited with being a father of the field in the United States as a result of his paper, The Varieties of Dispute Processing, presented at the Pound Conference in 1976 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Professor Sander's book, Dispute Resolution: Negotiation, Mediation, and Other Processes, which he coauthored with Stephen B. Goldberg, Nancy H. Rogers, and Sarah Rudolph Cole, is used in law schools throughout the United States.
William Edward Simkin was an American labor mediator and private arbitrator who worked on resolving strikes in major nationwide industries as the longest-serving head of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the nation's top labor mediator.
David Lawrence Cole was an American labor mediator who served as the second Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, appointed by President of the United States Harry S. Truman in 1952 to succeed Cyrus S. Ching.
Theodore Woodrow Kheel was an American attorney and labor mediator who played a key role in reaching resolutions of long-simmering labor disputes between managements and unions and resulting strikes in New York City and elsewhere in the United States, including the 114-day-long 1962-63 New York City newspaper strike that crippled the city's traditional media.
James A. Gross is an American educator and historian who teaches United States labor law and labor history at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He is the author of a highly regarded three-volume history of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and is considered the leading historian of the NLRB.
Executive Order 10988 is a United States presidential executive order issued by President John F. Kennedy on January 17, 1962 that granted federal employees the right to collective bargaining. This executive order was a breakthrough for public sector workers, who were not protected under the 1935 Wagner Act.
Douglas Samuel Jones, is an independent international arbitrator based in London, Sydney and Toronto. He is a door tenant at Atkin Chambers, London, a member of Sydney Arbitration Chambers, and a member of Toronto Arbitration Chambers in Toronto, Canada. He serves as an International Judge of the Singapore International Commercial Court.
The National War Labor Board (NWLB) was an agency of the United States government established on April 8, 1918 to mediate labor disputes during World War I.
Jean Trepp McKelvey was an American economist specialising in arbitration and industrial relations. McKelvey was an esteemed tenure professor at Sarah Lawrence College (1932–1945) and Cornell University (1946–1976) where at the latter she was a founding faculty member for the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, developing the curriculum and teaching five courses including arbitration, labor law and labor practices. Coined the "mother of arbitration", in 1947 McKelvey was the first woman admitted to the National Academy of Arbitrators, in 1970 became its first woman president and established an arbitration training program for women and minorities. In addition to her successful published research career, McKelvey served on the New York State Board of Mediation (1955–1966) and Federal Services Impasses Panel (1979–1990) and received numerous accolades including the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service's Special Award for Distinguished Service in Labor Management Relations (1973) and Arbitrator of the Year Award from the American Arbitration Association (1983).
Mark Gaston Pearce is an American lawyer, arbitrator and university professor who is best known for serving as a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Pearce was designated chairman of the board by President Barack Obama on August 28, 2011, and served as chairman until January 22, 2017. He currently is a visiting professor and the executive director of the Workers' Rights Institute at Georgetown University Law Center.
Sharon Block is an American attorney, government official, labor policy advisor and law professor who served during the Biden Administration as the Associate Administrator delegated the duties of the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from January 20, 2021 to February 1, 2022. During the Obama Administration, Block served on the National Labor Relations Board and in the United States Department of Labor and the White House. She currently serves as a Professor of Practice and the executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.
