David Joseph Saposs (February 22, 1886 – November 13, 1968) was an 20th-century American economist, labor historian, and civil servant, best known as chief economist of the National Labor Relations Board (1935–1940).[1]
David Saposnik was born on February 22, 1886, in the city of Kyiv in the Russian Empire.[1][2][3] His parents were Isaac Saposnik, a peddler, and Shima Erevsky.[1][4] In 1895, the family emigrated to the United States and shortened their name to Saposs.[4] The Jewish family settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1900, he quit school after fifth grade[1] and worked in beer breweries (including the Blatz and Schlitz brewering companies[1]) in his teens to help support his family.[1][3][5] In 1906, at the age of 20, he was elected shop steward for the local Brewery Workers' Union.[1][4]
Although he lacked a high school diploma, Saposs was admitted in 1907 to the University of Wisconsin (UW).[4] He graduated in 1911,[1] and enrolled part-time in the graduate program at UW.[3] He enrolled full-time beginning in 1913, and graduated with a Ph.D. in economics in 1915.[1][2][3] While in the doctoral program at Wisconsin, Saposs was a student of the nationally known labor economist John R. Commons[1] and a close friend of fellow student Selig Perlman (who later became a nationally known labor economist in his own right).[5][6]
Saposs worked in a variety of positions over the next few years. He was an accident prevention investigator for the New York Department of Labor,[1] an investigator into the role immigrants played in American labor unions for the Carnegie Corporation,[1] investigated the Steel strike of 1919 on behalf of the Inter-Church World Movement Commission,[1] and served as Educational Director for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union.[1][2][4][7][8]
In 1920, he became an economic consultant to the Labor Bureau, Inc. (founded by George Henry Soule Jr. along with Evans Clark and Alfred L. Bernheim) through 1922.[1]
In 1922, Saposs was appointed an instructor at Brookwood Labor College.[1] In 1924, he started post-graduate work in economics and labor history at Columbia University.[1][2][3][8] At Columbia, he became close friends with William Morris Leiserson, later a colleague at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).[5] He ended his post-graduate work at Columbia after two years without obtaining an additional degree.[3] Columbia University was embarking on a major study of socio-economic conditions in France, and asked Saposs to lead the study of labor conditions there. Saposs agreed to do so, and moved to France to conduct the study for the next two years.[4][9]
In 1934, Saposs became research director for the Twentieth Century Fund's newly founded labor unit and remained an associate there through 1945.[1][5][7][8]
In 1935, Saposs became a research consultant to the United States Department of Labor (USDOL), for whom he wrote a report on company unions.[1]
Later in 1935, Saposs joined the nascent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). He quickly built a staff and began collecting information on the role labor unions played in interstate commerce and the social and economic impacts unions had.[10] The research conducted under Saposs' leadership proved critical to winning over the Supreme Court of the United States, which held in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, 301 U.S. 1 (1938) that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was constitutional.[10][11] However, Saposs' tenure at the NLRB proved short. Although it had once supported the NLRA, the American Federation of Labor (AFL; which supported craft unionism) became convinced that the Board and its staff (including Saposs) were more supportive of the industrial unionism of its competitor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The AFL allied with anti-union DemocraticRepresentativeHoward W. Smith to attack the National Labor Relations Board. Saposs was a leader among anti-communist leftists.[12] He had even been surreptitiously assessed by members of the Communist Party USA for membership, and rejected as a prospect.[13] He had also tried to expose those individuals at the Board who he felt were communists.[14] But Smith and others attacked Saposs as a communist, and the United States Congress defunded his division and his job on October 11, 1940.[2][15]
In 1945, Saposs became Chief of the Reports and Statistics Office in the Manpower Division of the Office of Military Government, United States, in post-World War II Germany.[1][12][17] He left that position after a year to become Special Assistant to the Commissioner of Labor Statistics in the United States Department of Labor.[17] In 1936, he became Special Assistant to the Commission of Labor Statistics at USDOL.[1] In 1948, he became Special Advisor to the European Labor Division of the United States Economic Cooperation Administration.[1][2][17] In 1952, he returned to Labor Statistics and retired from federal government service in 1954.[1][2][17]
On July 3, 1917, Saposs married Bertha Tigay, a social worker; they had two daughters.[1][2][4]
David Joseph Saposs died age 82 on November 13, 1968, at his home in Washington, D.C., from a stroke. His wife and two daughters survived him.[2]
Legacy
The University of Wisconsin's archive assesses Saposs as follows:
Although Saposs was a militant liberal and an early critic of Communist intervention in the American labor union movement, the House Committee on Un-American Affairs accused him of being a red, and he was forced to resign from the NLRB. His work on the Board was an integral part of the New Deal's efforts to better the status of the American worker.[1]
Works
Between 1913 and 1968, Saposs published more than a dozen books and many more articles.[1]
Betz, Paul R. and Carnes, Mark C. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Champlin, Dell P. and Knoedler, Janet T. The Institutionalist Tradition in Labor Economics. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2004.
"David Saposs, 82, Labor Economist." New York Times. November 16, 1968.
Foner, Philip S. History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Vol. 1: From Colonial Times to the Founding of the American Federation of Labor. New York: International Publishers, 1947.
Fraser, Steve and Gerstle, Gary. The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Gross, James A. The Making of the National Labor Relations Board: A Study in Economics, Politics, and the Law, 1933–1937. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1974.
Gross, James A. The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board: National Labor Policy in Transition, 1937–1947. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1981.
Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States. United States House of Representatives. Special Committee on Un-American Activities. 76th Congress, 3d sess. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1940.
Jacobs, Meg. Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Papadimitriou, Dimitri B. "Minsky on Himself." In Financial Conditions and Macroeconomic Performance: Essays in Honor of Hyman P. Minsky. Steven M. Fazzari and Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, eds. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1992.
Tvede, Lars. Business Cycles: From John Law to the Internet Crash. 2d ed. Florence, Ky.: Psychology Press, 2001.
Weir, Robert E. Class in America: An Encyclopedia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2007.
Who Was Who in America, With World Notables. Chicago, Ill.: Marguis Who's Who, 1981.
Zamora, Emilio. Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas: Mexican Workers and Job Politics During World War II. College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2009.
