Harvey Winfield Brown

Harvey W. Brown at a meeting on the special program "10,000 refugee apartments" in Schleswig-Holstein in 1949

Harvey Winfield Brown (born October 28, 1883 in Dow, Schuylkill County , Pennsylvania , † September 4, 1956 ) was an American trade union official and politician . As director of the Office for Labor Affairs in the US High Commission for Germany , he was instrumental in the political and economic reconstruction of post-war Germany from 1949 to 1952 . He initiated (among other things) together with Hans Böckler the ERP special program “10,000 refugee apartments” in Schleswig-Holstein.

Live and act

Brown began to learn the machinist trade as a trainee in 1900. From 1902 he worked as a machinist. In 1905 he became a member of the IAM - International Association of Machinists. From 1911 to 1916 Brown was executive representative of the IAM in the coal districts of Pennsylvania and Newark, Ohio, and in 1921, he became vice president of the IAM, based in Cleveland, Ohio.

In 1934 Brown was assigned to the Executive Board of the IAM in Washington and was elected President of the International Association of Machinists in 1938 and Ordinary President of the International Association of Machinists in 1939 after long-serving President Arthur Wharton resigned. During his tenure until 1948, the union changed from a pure representation of railway workers to an industrial union, which also represents the employees of the aviation industry.

From 1938 onwards, Harvey W. Brown was also the director of Union Labor Life Insurance Co., the life insurance policy for union members.

In July 1949, the newly appointed American High Commissioner in Germany, John Jay McCloy , appointed Brown as an advisor to his "Cabinet" and appointed him director of the Labor Affairs Office, which he held until 1952.

Sources and literature

• New York Times, September 5, 1956

• International Biographical Archive 37/1949 of September 5, 1949

• Mark Perlman, "The Machinists: A New Study in American Trade Unionism"; Wertheim Publications in Industrial Relations 98, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1961

• Reinhold Nimptsch: “Productive refugee aid from the trade unions: New organizational methods for the construction of 10,000 apartments”; Cologne 1950

• Working group for contemporary building eV (ed.): Johannes Scharre, Ulrich Haake: "The construction of 10,000 refugee apartments in Schleswig-Holstein (ERP special program 1950) - result, method, experiences and conclusions", / Working group for productive refugee aid eV; (Research report on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Housing No. 148 (2404/05)); Building research report of the Working Group for Contemporary Building eV No. 2, Kiel 1952

• Entry "Brown, Harvey W." in Munzinger Online / People - International Biographical Archive, URL: http://www.munzinger.de/document/00000002767

• Working group for contemporary building eV (Ed.): Haake, Ulrich: "Building cost reduction through standardization and typification - ERP experiences"; Bulletin No. 40, Kiel 1953

• Ulrich Haake: "10 years of housing construction in Schleswig-Holstein 1946 - 1956"; Kiel 1956