William Usery Jr.

William Julian Usery Jr. (December 21, 1923 – December 10, 2016) was an American labor union activist and government appointee who served as United States secretary of labor in the Ford administration.

Although Willie was his birth name, official sources often mistakenly called him "William."

For much of his life, Usery was known as "W.J.," although most associates called him "Bill."

Usery was born on December 21, 1923, in Hardwick, Georgia, the son of Willie J. Usery and Effie Mae Williamson (later Phillips).

He attended Georgia Military College from 1938 to 1941.

From 1941 to 1942, he worked as an underwater welder for the J. A. Jones Construction Company in Brunswick, Georgia, building Liberty ships.

Usery married Gussie Mae Smith in 1942.

With the need for naval welders growing dramatically during World War II, Usery enlisted in the United States Navy.

From 1943 to 1946, Usery worked on a U.S. Navy repair ship in the Pacific.

Following World War II, Usery worked as a steamfitter, welder, and machinist in Georgia.

He attended Mercer University, but did not graduate.

On March 1, 1952, while working as a machinist at the Armstrong Cork Company, Usery helped co-found Local Lodge 8 (now Local Lodge 918) of the International Association of Machinists (IAM), AFL-CIO.

Over the years, he was elected to a series of offices within Local Lodge 8, eventually becoming president of the local union.

While working at Armstrong Cork, Usery served as the IAM's special representative at the U.S. Air Force Cape Canaveral Air Force Missile Test Center (AFMTC).

In 1956, Usery retired from his job at Armstrong Cork after being elected a Grand Lodge Representative for the IAM.

In this capacity, in 1961 Usery became the union representative on the President's Missile Sites Labor Commission.

Usery was responsible for leading labor negotiations and helping to administer and service union contracts at Cape Canaveral AFMTC, John F. Kennedy Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center Manned Spacecraft Center.

In 1967, Usery was designated by IAM to a labor-management council at Kennedy Space Center.

He became the council's chair in 1968.

In February 1969, President Richard Nixon nominated Usery to be Assistant Secretary of Labor for Labor-Management Relations in the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).

Usery oversaw the implementation and enforcement of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act.

Usery helped write and implement Executive Order 11491 (October 29, 1969, which gave union organizing rights to two million federal government workers and established collective bargaining, grievance and dispute resolution procedures. The executive order had been long-sought by the American labor movement, and brought federal collective bargaining practices in line with those already in use in private industry.

During his tenure at DOL, Usery was instrumental in averting several large strikes.

In April 1969, Usery helped avert a nationwide strike by the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen through round-the-clock, non-stop negotiations.

He helped resolve collective bargaining disputes between the railways and the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks and the United Transportation Union.

Other strikes could not be avoided.

Usery was part of a DOL team which was unable to avoid a national postal service strike.

The illegal strike by more than 210,000 United States Postal Service workers began on March 18, 1970, in New York City.

Nixon appeared on national television and ordered the employees back to work, but his address only stiffened the resolve of the existing strikers and angered workers in other 671 locations in other cities into walking out as well.

Workers in other government agencies also announced they would strike as well if Nixon pursued legal action against the postal employees.

The strike crippled the nation's mail system, disrupting delivery of pension and welfare checks, tax refunds, census forms, and draft notices.

Businesses hired planes and trucks to deliver publications or letters.

Nixon spoke to the nation again on March 25 and ordered a 24,000 Army, Army National Guard, Army Reserve, Air National Guard, Navy Reserve, Air Force Reserve, and Marine Corps Reserve forces to begin distributing the mail.

But the military proved ineffective at distributing the mail.

Negotiations, in which Usery played a key role, resolved the postal strike in just two weeks.

Postal unions, Nixon administration officials and Congressional aides not only negotiated a contract which gave the unions most of what they wanted, but which also established a legislative framework which led to the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970.

Under the act, postal unions won the right to negotiate on wages, benefits and working conditions.

On July 1, 1971, five federal postal unions merged to form the American Postal Workers Union, the largest postal workers union in the world.

Although influential in the Nixon administration, Usery was unable to persuade the president to refrain from temporarily suspending the Davis-Bacon Act in 1971.

The act set wages for construction workers on projects receiving federal funds.