Joseph F. Finnegan
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Joseph Francis Finnegan (September 12, 1904 – February 12, 1964) was an American labor mediator who was appointed by President of the United States Dwight D. Eisenhower to serve as the fourth Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service from 1955 to 1961, and served as the first director of the equivalent body in New York State.
He was born on September 12, 1904, in North Adams, Massachusetts. His newspaperman father moved the family to New York City when Finnegan was a youth. He attended St. Francis Xavier High School there and graduated from Columbia University in 1928.[1] He was an evening student at Fordham University School of Law, graduating in 1931 his law degree.[2]
Finnegan funded his law school education with a job checking cargo on the piers in Brooklyn and as a Wall Street Journal reporter.[2] After graduating from law school, He worked as an assistant United States Attorney under Thomas E. Dewey from 1931 to 1934 and then spent a year in a law firm.[3] Passage of the Wagner Act in 1935 led to a surge in demand for labor law specialists and he pursued the trend and "became an expert awfully fast".[2]
During World War II, Finnegan served in the Air Transport Command of the United States Army Air Forces, attaining the rank of major. He was assigned responsibility for traveling across the globe to convince incapable top-ranking officers to retire, recalling how he "went into a general's office and gave him 10 reasons why he should go home".[2]