Meeting of the Board of Directors, March 27, 1984

Born in Hardwick, Georgia, December 21, 1923, Willie Julian Usery, Jr. has been known as "Bill" throughout his life. Educated at Georgia Military College (1938-1941) in Milledgeville, Usery worked as a machinist at naval shipyards in Brunswick, Georgia, and later as a Navy enlisted (1943-1946) underwater welder on a repair ship in the Pacific Fleet. While working as a maintenance machinist at the Armstrong Cork Company, Macon, Georgia (1948-1956), Usery attended Mercer University. Usery was a founding member of the International Association of Machinists' Local 8 (joining March 1, 1952, what is now Local 918), eventually becoming its president and later IAM Grand Lodge Representative from 1956 until February 1969. In 1961, while ""GLR"" Usery was appointed industrial union representative on the President's Missile Sites Labor Commission at Cape Canaveral (Kennedy Space Center from 1963 on) and at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Additionally, Usery coordinated union activities at the Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas, and in 1967 became a member of the Cape Kennedy Labor-Management Relations Council, serving as its chair in 1968. In February 1969, Usery received his first Presidential appointment from Richard Nixon as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Labor-Management Relations. While administering the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), Usery formulated and implemented Executive Order 1199, establishing standards of organizing and bargaining for more than two million Federal employees. In 1970 and 1971, Usery worked intensively to settle disputes in the railway industry involving the Brotherhood of Airline and Railway and Airline Clerks (BRAC) and the United Transportation Union (UTU). Employing his characteristic non-stop negotiations, Usery had already averted a 1971, nationwide strike by the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen. Also in 1971, Usery had obtained the first collective bargaining agreement in the United States Postal Service's history. From March ...