Biography

A prolific scholar of labor and discrimination law, William B. Gould IV has been an influential voice on worker- management relations for more than forty years and recently served as chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. Professor Gould has been a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators since 1970 and has arbitrated and mediated more than 200 labor disputes, including the 1992 and 1993 salary disputes between the Major League Baseball Players Association and the Major League Baseball Player Relations Committee. He currently serves as independent Monitor for FirstGroup America, addressing freedom of association complaints.

A critically acclaimed author of nine books and more than sixty law review articles, Professor Gould’s work includes his historical record of the experiences of his great-grandfather in Diary of a Contraband: The Civil War Passage of a Black Sailor, and his own Washington story, Labored Relations: Law, Politics and the NLRB: A Memoir.

Professor Gould is the recipient of five honorary doctorates for his significant contributions in the fields of labor law and labor relations. Before joining the Stanford Law School Faculty in 1972, he was a professor of law at Wayne State University Law School and was an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board, as well as for United Auto Workers.

Key Works

• William B. Gould IV, Kissing Cousins?: The Federal Arbitration Act and Modern Labor Arbitration, 55 Emory Law Journal 609
• William B. Gould, IV, Labor Issues in Professional Sports: Reflections on Baseball, Labor, and Antitrust Law (Symposium: Sports and the Law), 15 Stanford Law and Policy Review 61-98.
• William B. Gould, IV, The Idea of the Job as Property in Contemporary America: The Legal and Collective Bargaining Framework, 1986 Brigham Young University Law Review 895-918.
• William B. Gould IV, Japan’s Reshaping of American Labor Law, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984.
• William B. Gould IV, On Labor Injunctions Pending Arbitration: Recasting Buffalo Forge, 30 Stanford Law Review 533
• William B. Gould IV, Black Workers in White Unions: Job Discrimination in the United States, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.
• William B. Gould IV, Taft-Hartley Comes to Great Britain: Observations on the Industrial Relations Act of 1971, 81 Yale Law Journal 1421 (1972).
• William B. Gould IV, Black Power in the Unions: The Impact Upon Collective Bargaining Relationships, 79 Yale Law Journal 46.

In the News

• Jack Pemberton Dies, Led ACLU In Turbulent '60s
  San Francisco Chronicle, October 27, 2009
• Modern Day Yellow Dog Contracts??
  Adjunct Law Prof Blog, August 31, 2009
• Illegal workers: Are they entitled to sue?
  United Press International, August 31, 2009
• The New Yellow-Dog Contracts
  Workplace Prof Blog, August 30, 2009
• Arbitration Is Key In Fight Over Union Bill
  Associated Press, July 28, 2009

Courses & Programs

Courses

• Labor Law

Publications & Cases

Recent Publications View All

• William B. Gould IV, What Would Employee Free Choice Mean in the Workplace? 58th Annual Conference of the Association of Labor Relations Agencies: Labor Management Relations and the Global Economic Crisis, July 20, 2009, Oakland, CA.
• William B. Gould IV, Fixing a Broken System, Daily Journal, July 15, 2009.
• William B. Gould IV, The Employee Free Choice Act of 2009, Labor Law Reform, and What Can Be Done About the Broken System of Labor-Management Relations Law in the United States, 43 University of San Francisco Law Review (Fall 2008).
• William B. Gould IV, Prospects for Labor Law Reform After the 2008 Election - Law Perspective, 61st Annual Meeting of the Labor and Employment Relations Association, January 4, 2009, San Francisco, CA.
• William B. Gould IV, Gould, William B., in The African American National Biography, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Brooks-Higginbotham, eds., New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• William B. Gould IV, The Decline and Irrelevance of the NLRB and What Can Be Done About It: Some Reflections on Privately Devised Alternatives, Keynote Address to the State Bar of California Labor and Employment Law Section Annual Meeting, San Diego Bay Hyatt Regency Marina and Spa, San Diego, California, October 31, 2008.
• William B. Gould IV, How Obama Could Fix Labor Law, Slate.com, August 29, 2008.
• William B. Gould IV, Labor and Employment Arbitration, in American Arbitration Practice, New York: Practising Law Institute, forthcoming 2008.
• William B. Gould IV, The 1994-'95 Baseball Strike and National Labor Relations Board: To the Precipice and Back Again, 110 West Virginia Law Review 983 (Spring 2008).
• William B. Gould IV, Industrial Relations and the Law, in New Directions in the Study of Work and Employment: Revitalizing Industrial Relations as an Academic Enterprise, Charles J. Whalen, ed., Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2008.

Affiliations & Honors

Professional Affiliations

• Member (1970-Present), National Academy of Arbitrators
• Member (1994-1996), Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States
• Chairman (1994-1998), National Labor Relations Board