The New Labor Board

For the first time since the National Labor Relations Board was formed in 1935, the board has a majority of Republican appointees. Last week President Eisenhower named Missouri-born Republican Albert C. Beeson. 47. industrial relations director of the Food Machinery & Chemical Corp.. San Jose, Calif., as the board's fifth member (he is Ike's third appointment).

Beeson. who succeeds resigned Board Member Paul L. Styles in the null year job, is a lecturer on industrial management at Stanford University, and onetime president of the California Personnel Management Association. The board, weighted almost throughout its history on the side of labor, is now one which favors a minimum of government interference in business and labor relations, and is much more inclined to judge each case on its own merits. Said Beeson: "Regardless of what the members feel personally, they should . . . interpret the [Taft-Hartley] Act fairly."

Previous Eisenhower appointments to the board were Guy Farmer, a labor lawyer and onetime associate general counsel of the board who calls himself an "Independent." and Republican Philip Ray Rodgers, who was staff director of the Senate Labor Committee under Bob Taft.

(Holdover board members are Utah's ex-Senator Abe Murdock, Democrat, and Ivar Peterson, Independent.) Farmer, now the board's chairman, chalked up a sizable record of dissents while Democrats were still in the majority, though he occasionally sided with them. Said he: "When you reach this place, your job is to submerge your ideology in favor of the law as it's written."

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