For Labor To Build Upon

William B. Gould IV is Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Stanford Law School. A prolific scholar of labor and discrimination law, Gould has been an influential voice in worker–management relations for more than fifty years and served as Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB, 1994–1998) and subsequently Chairman of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (2014-2017). As NLRB Chairman, he played a critical role in bringing the 1994–1995 baseball strike to its conclusion and has arbitrated and mediated more than three hundred labor disputes, including the 1992 and 1993 salary disputes between the Major League Baseball Players Association and the Major League Baseball Player Relations Committee. Gould also served as Special Advisor to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on project labor agreements (2011–2012). Independent Reviewer on Equal Employment Opportunity for San Francisco (2020-2021) and a critically acclaimed author of ten books and more than sixty law review articles, Professor Gould is the recipient of five honorary doctorates for his contributions to the fields of labor law and labor relations.

1. Introduction; 2. An overview; 3. Unions, employment conditions, and American exceptionalism; 4. The historical backdrop; 5. Modern labor framework; 6. The gig economy and all that; 7. American amateur players arise: You have nothing to lose but your amateurism; 8. Union decline: Can labor law revisions be enacted and have an impact?; 9. Conclusion.