John Thomas Dunlop

Who was John Thomas Dunlop?

John Thomas Dunlop was a United States administrator and labor scholar.

John Thomas Dunlop was the United States Secretary of Labor between 1975 and 1976. He was Director of the U.S. Cost of Living Council from 1973–1974, Chairman of the U.S.Commission on the Future of Worker/Management Relations from 1993–1995 and arbitrator and impartial chairman of various U.S. labor-management committees, and also member of numerous government boards on industrial relations disputes and economic stabilization programs.

A labor economist, Dunlop received his Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley in 1939. He taught at Harvard University from 1938 until his retirement as Lamont University Professor in 1984. While at Harvard, he was Chairman of the Economics Department from 1961–1966 and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1969-1973.

Dunlop came to be recognized in the postwar United States as the most influential figure in the field of Industrial Relations. Though primarily a labor economist and later an academic dean at Harvard University, Dunlop carried out advisory roles in every U.S. Presidential Administration from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton. He mediated and arbitrated disputes in a wide variety of industries and over a range of issues in the formative post-World War II period. He also influenced the study of industrial and labor relations with his framework of an “industrial relations system” that arose from his scholarly as well as applied work. In looking back at his own legacy, Dunlop regarded himself fundamentally as a problem solver with an abiding interest in the workplace.