Aaron, Benjamin 1915–2007

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Aaron, Benjamin 1915–2007

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born September 2, 1915, in Chicago, IL; died after a cerebral hemorrhage, August 25, 2007, in Los Angeles, CA. Lawyer, arbitrator, educator, administrator, and author. Aaron spent much of his career studying labor law, industrial relations, and collective bargaining. He worked as an arbitrator of labor disputes for several decades. During World War II, Aaron worked for the National War Labor Board, then served as an officer of the Wage Stabilization Board. In the 1960s, as a presidential appointee to the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress, he countered public fears that technology—especially automated manufacturing—would lead to widespread unemployment. His prediction that automation would not prove to be a substantial threat turned out to be correct. At about the same time, Aaron established the Comparative Labor Law Group to investigate the methods that other industrialized countries used to address labor and collective bargaining issues. He concluded that U.S. practices were deficient, especially in terms of protecting nonunionized workers. Aaron was affiliated with the University of California at Los Angeles from 1946 to 1986 as a professor of law and director of the university's Institute of Industrial Relations. During that time he also worked as a mediator of labor disputes, most notably on a long and bitter teachers' strike in 1970 that crippled the Los Angeles public school system for weeks until he was able to negotiate a settlement. Aaron wrote and edited several books. He was a coauthor of Discrimination in Employment: A Study of Six Countries (1978) and author of New Trends in Labour Law in the United States (1987). He coedited Industrial Conflict: A Comparative Legal Survey (1972) and Public Policy and Collective Bargaining (1982). Aaron remained active in retirement as a member of the editorial board of International Labour Law Reports until 2005. His autobiography was published in 2007.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Aaron, Benjamin, A Life in Labor Law: The Memoirs of Benjamin Aaron, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, University of California (Los Angeles, CA), 2007.

Bellace, J.R., and M.G. Rood, editors, Labour Law at the Crossroads: Changing Employment Relations; Studies in Honour of Benjamin Aaron, Kluwer Law International (Boston, MA), 1997.