Nathan Witt

Nathan Witt (February 11, 1903 – February 16, 1982), born Nathan Wittowsky, was an American lawyer who is best known as being the Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from 1937 to 1940.

He resigned from the NLRB after his communist political beliefs were exposed, and he was accused of manipulating the Board's policies to favor his own political leanings.

Nathan R. Witt was born February 11, 1903, into a Jewish family on the Lower East Side of New York City.

His father changed the family name to Witt shortly after his birth.

His college education was interrupted several times by the need to earn a living: he drove a taxi cab.

In 1927, he graduated from New York University (NYU).

It was at NYU's Washington Square College that he met Lee Pressman.

Angered by what he perceived as the judicial mistreatment and illegal execution of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, he drove a taxi cab for two years to earn money for law school.

He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1932, or 1933, specializing in labor law.

He attended Harvard shortly after Alger Hiss had left the school, and he was a friend of Donald Hiss, a Harvard Law classmate and Alger Hiss's younger brother.

Witt joined the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) in July 1933.

His friend, Lee Pressman, recommended him for the job.

According to accusers Whittaker Chambers, Lee Pressman, and Elizabeth Bentley, Witt—along with John Abt, Charles Kramer, Alger Hiss, and Nathaniel Weyl, among others—were part of the so-called "Ware group," a clandestine Communist Party USA group formed by AAA economist Harold Ware.

Witt joined the legal staff of the "first" National Labor Relations Board in February 1934.

Chambers also alleged that Witt became leader of the group after Ware died in an automobile accident in August 1935.

Pressman said the men merely met to study and discuss left-wing political theory, but Chambers described it as a Soviet-controlled cell dedicated to committing espionage.

The National Labor Relations Act became law in June 1935, creating the "second" (permanent) NLRB.

Witt was named the NLRB's assistant chief counsel ("assistant general counsel" ) in December 1935.

He exerted a great deal of influence in the Review Section, the division of the NLRB which reviewed transcripts of NLRB hearings in labor disputes, revised transcripts to emphasize points of law, reviewed draft decisions of examiners for adherence to NLRB policy and law, and made oral reports to the three members of the Board.

He chose (with the approval of the Board) the attorneys who staffed the Review Section, assigned cases to attorneys, and checked the drafts of Board decisions for technical accuracy.

Witt recommended Pressman for a job as a trial examiner at the NLRB in 1936.

Witt was named Secretary (the highest non-appointed bureaucratic office—or "the top administrative officer" ) of the Board in October (or November ) 1937.

The enormous workload and tremendous expansion in the number of personnel at the NLRB made Witt the agency's most powerful individual.

He attended Board meetings, took Board minutes, prepared and served Board decisions ordering union organizing elections, granted and denied requests for oral testimony from employers, oversaw each Board member's appointments and administered the office and oversaw the staff of 250.

He was the Board's chief liaison to Congress and oversaw preparation and submission of the Board's budget.

He was the sole supervisor of the Board's 22 regional offices, overseeing the roughly 225 personnel in the field.

He alone exercised the authority to authorize a hearing in the case of unfair labor practice (ULP) or election cases, and he alone reported on these cases (in oral, not written) fashion to the Board.

Almost all correspondence, telephone contact, and telegraph contact between the regional offices and the Board passed through his office first, and his office collected nearly all the information coming in from the field regarding elections, ULPs, settlements, strikes, enforcement issues, informational inquiries, and the development of new policies.

Chambers told Adolf A. Berle, then Assistant Secretary of State, about Witt's involvement in the "Ware group" in 1939.

Berle later said that "to be blunt about it, Mr. Witt's statements and sympathies were so well known that what Mr. Chambers had said added nothing to anything that wasn't public knowledge at the time."

William S. Leiserson, an NLRB Board member, knew Witt held communist beliefs almost from the first days after Leiserson joined the Board.

There is general agreement among professional historians that Witt's communist views did not affect his work and did not change the outcome of any policy choices made by government agencies.

He was also investigated several times in the late 1940s and 1950s for being a spy for the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

No evidence of espionage was ever found.

Historian David M. Kennedy, assessing a half-century's evidence about the case, concurred with Pressman's assessment in 2001.

There is widespread disagreement as to whether Witt was actually a Communist Party member or not.

Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. observed that Chambers never provided evidence of Witt's party membership, just uncorroborated accusation.

Labor historian Leon Fink agrees.

Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein, however, concluded that Witt "probably" was both a member of the Communist Party and held communist ideals, but historian Ronald Schatz has asserted that Witt's communist sympathies did "not necessarily" mean Party membership.

Witt never hid his communism and made it well known to others from his earliest days in the government.