[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 77 (Wednesday, May 26, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6083-S6084]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TRIBUTE TO IDA KLAUS

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, just days ago Ida Klaus, properly 
described as a ``labor law pioneer,'' died at the age of 94. I had the 
great privilege of working with her in the Kennedy Administration in 
1961 when she advised us on the development of Executive Order 10988, 
``Employee-Management Cooperation in the Federal Service,'' a defining 
event in the history of federal employment. She was a brilliant person, 
warm and concerned for others in a way that made possible her great 
achievements.
  Mr. President, I ask that her obituary from The New York Times of May 
20, 1999 be printed in the Record.
  The obituary follows:

[[Page S6084]]

        Ida Klaus, 94, Labor Lawyer For U.S. and New York, Dies

                             (By Nick Ravo)

       Ida Klaus, a labor law pioneer who became a high-ranking 
     New York City official in the 1950's and who wrote the law 
     that gave city employees the right to bargain collectively, 
     died on Monday at her home in Manhattan. She was 94.
       Ms. Klaus was a lifelong labor advocate whose sympathy for 
     the working classes was instilled in her by her mother. As a 
     young child growing up in the Brownsville section of 
     Brooklyn, she helped give free food from the family grocery 
     to striking factory workers.
       She organized her first union while still in her teens. She 
     was one of three college women working as a waitress in the 
     summer with several professional waiters at the Gross & Baum 
     Hotel in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. One day, she heard that the 
     hotel planned to lay off some of the waiters.
       ``I don't known where I got the nerve, but I said, `Let's 
     get together and have a meeting,' '' she said in a 1974 
     interview in The New York Times.
       Ms. Klaus became the spokeswoman for the waiters and 
     waitresses, and told the hotel management that if anyone was 
     discharged, they would all go.
       ``At which point, Mr. Baum said he knew he shouldn't have 
     hired college girls,'' she recalled. ``But he didn't fire 
     anyone.''
       Ms. Klaus's desire to become a lawyer also derived from the 
     experience of watching her mother battle the court system for 
     10 years over her husband's estate.
       But after graduating from Hunter College and, in 1925, from 
     the Teachers Institute of Jewish Theological Seminary of 
     America, now the Albert A. List College, she was denied 
     admission to Columbia University Law School because she was a 
     woman.
       She taught Hebrew until 1928, when she was admitted to the 
     law school with the first class to accept women. She received 
     her law degree in 1931.
       After graduation, Ms. Klaus worked as a review lawyer for 
     the National Labor Relations Board in Washington. In 1948, 
     she took the post of solicitor for the National Labor 
     Relations Board, a position that made her the highest-ranking 
     female lawyer in the Federal Government.
       In 1954, she was hired as counsel to the New York City 
     Department of Labor under Mayor Robert F. Wagner. She became 
     known as the author of the so-called Little Wagner Act, the 
     city version of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, 
     which recognized workers' rights to organize and bargain 
     collectively through unions of their choosing. The Federal 
     Wagner Act was named for the Mayor's father, Senator Robert 
     F. Wagner.
       She also wrote Mayor Wagner's executive order creating the 
     first detailed code of labor relations for city employees.
       ``She is one of the pioneers and champions of bringing law 
     and order into labor relations,'' said Robert S. Rifkin, a 
     lawyer and longtime friend whose father, Simon H. Rifkin, was 
     a law clerk for Ms. Klaus. ``She believed labor relations 
     ought not to be under the rule of tooth and claw.''
       Ms. Klaus briefly worked in the Kennedy Administration in 
     1961 as a consultant for the first labor relations task force 
     for Federal employees.
       She returned to New York in 1962 as director of staff 
     relations for the Board of Education, where she negotiated 
     what was reported to be the first citywide teachers' contract 
     in the country.
       She left in 1975 to become a private arbitrator. In 1980, 
     President Jimmy Carter appointed her one of the three 
     negotiators in the Long Island Rail Road strike.
       Ms. Klaus, was born on Jan. 8, 1905, received Columbia Law 
     School's Medal for excellence in 1996, and an honorary 
     doctorate in 1994 from the Jewish Theological Seminary.
       No close relatives survive.

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