Type: Exhibition section

Name: Labor

Detail: "I certainly will do everything I can to push for more and better laws to protect the working man who is the backbone of our country." Harrison A. Williams, Jr., Remarks before the N.J. State AFL-CIO Legislative Conference, 24 March 1969.

With education positioning more Americans to be gainfully employed and more sophisticated participants in the nation's economy, it was essential that workplace practices be modified to support the Great Society's social goals. Williams sponsored legislation throughout his career aimed at ensuring justice for Americans in employment matters. Traditional practices of employment discrimination based on age, sex, race, and other factors were outlawed. Exploitative or abusive workplace practices were at least mitigated through legislation establishing minimum wages, occupational safety and health standards, and private pension protections. Williams advocated an active role for the federal government—via program and project funding and regulation—in ensuring that these broad social goals were accomplished within the essential framework of private enterprise. In response to cyclical economic downturns, government spending on projects and public employment were viewed as correctives and as productive alternatives to direct welfare payments.

Type: Exhibition caption

Detail: After several years of legislative effort, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, known as ERISA, was signed into law. The law established regulatory standards concerning pension benefits promised to employees by private employers and was a response to the inadequacies of many such plans. The law has been amended over the years, including in 1986 when it was expanded to provide group health insurance continuation coverage rights to employees, rights popularly known as “COBRA.”

Type: Finding aid

Name: Inventory to the Papers of Harrison A. Williams, Jr.

Detail: Finding aid provides description of materials in the Harrison A. Williams collection