Stanford, Calif., February 20, 2014 – California Governor Jerry Brown has appointed William B. Gould IV as a member and Chair of the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board, the Governor’s Office announced this week. The appointment is effective as of March 18, 2014. Gould is the Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Stanford Law School.

Gould praised the Agricultural Labor Relations Act as one of Governor Brown’s early achievements. He also observed that the Act, much like the National Labor Relations Act, promotes the collective bargaining process and workers’ freedom of association.

“I welcome the challenge of the Governor’s appointment,” Gould said. “In the coming weeks and months, I look forward to meeting other Board members, the General Counsel, ALRB staff throughout our state, stakeholders and elected officials, and members of the public. I shall do the best that I can to give back to California, which has given so much to my family and to me.”

A prolific scholar of labor and discrimination law, Gould has been a highly influential voice on worker-management relations for more than 40 years. Before arriving at Stanford Law School in 1972, Gould was an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board and the United Auto Workers. He served as Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board from 1994 to 1998.

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 has also acted as Special Advisor to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and as Independent Monitor for FirstGroup America. In addition, Gould has received five honorary doctorates for his contributions to the fields of labor law and labor relations.

Gould is a critically acclaimed author of 10 books and more than 60 law review articles. His work includes a 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 story, Labored Relations: Law, Politics and the NLRB: A Memoir. Gould’s most recent book is Bargaining with Baseball: Labor Relations in an Age of Prosperous Turmoil.

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