George W Taylor

Taylor, as a young scholar in his 20s, had written his Wharton PhD dissertation on labor relations in the hosiery industry before becoming one of the most influential members of the Industrial Research Department. When the Aberle Hosiery Mills strike erupted, the industry appointed him “impartial chairperson,” allowing him to put his IRD research on collective bargaining into practice. The strike was the first of 2,000 he would settle. A staunch believer in the equality of the parties in collective bargaining, Taylor served for more than 40 years at Wharton, at the same time playing a critical role as the nation’s “Father of American Arbitration.” Taylor served as labor adviser to five U.S. Presidents — Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson — as well as a counselor and adviser to numerous U.S. Secretaries of Labor. In 1995, Taylor was posthumously inducted into the U.S. Labor Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the U.S. Department of Labor. He died in 1972.