Bill Usery to speak on airline labor issues
at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

The Economics Club hosted Mr. Bill Usery on October 27, 2005 for a talk on "Changing Business Models in the Airline Industry: What This Means for Employee/Management Relations."

W.J. "Bill" Usery has spent almost four decades in labor-management relations activity, having participated in hundreds of collective bargaining disputes in a wide variety of private industries as well as in the public sector. He was involved with negotiations during the 1970 postal union strike, during the joint venture between GM and Toyota that established New United Motor Manufacturing, Incorporated (NUMMI) in 1984, and during the 1994 major league baseball strike.

A native of Hartwick, Georgia, Mr. Usery served in the Navy 1943-46. He then worked as a maintenance machinist, and held a variety of union posts, initially local and then national in scope. In 1968 he joined government service as Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Nixon and went on to become Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor under President Ford.

In 1997, Georgia State University established the W.J. Usery Jr. Center for the Workplace in his honor. The center's mission is to help organizations "find innovative solutions to workplace problems and issues."