Eric J. Schmertz
		Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Law
		B.A., Union College J.D., New York University LL.D., Union College
		Phone:  (516) 463-5159 Fax:  (516) 463-6091 E-mail:  actejs@hofstra.edu

Biography

Professor Schmertz served as dean of the Hofstra University School of Law from 1982 to 1989. In May of 1981 he was named the Edward F. Carlough Distinguished Professor of Labor Law, occupying the school's first endowed chair, and has been a professor of law at Hofstra since the establishment of its School of Law.

Professor Schmertz has had a distinguished career in public service. For the last 30 years, he had been one of the country's top labor-management arbitrators and impartial chairman of several industries.

From 1969 to 1968, by appointment of Governor Nelson Rockefeller, he was executive director and member of the New York State Board of Mediation. For 12 years following its inception in 1968, he was a Public Member of the three-member New York City Office of Collective Bargaining by appointment of the City of New York and the municipal labor unions. From 1967 to 1978 he was the chief mediator in virtually every contract negotiation between the City of New York and its firefighter unions; was impartial chairman between those parties for 14 years; and was the chairman of the arbitration board that ended the only firefighter strike in the city's history in 1974.

He has served as the arbitrator or mediator in other major public and private sector labor disputes in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Illinois, and New York, including the New York City nursing home strike of 1978, the apartment house strike in 1979, the strike of the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes in 1967, and the private sanitation strike of 1991. He arbitrated the first contract between the City of Chicago and its firefighter unions. In 1974, 1976 and 1978, he was commissioned by the governments of the Philippines and Thailand to set up arbitration systems for those countries. By appointment of Mayor David N. Dinkins, Professor Schmertz was commissioner of labor relations of the City of New York from 1990-91, following which former Governor Mario Cuomo appointed him a member of the New York State Public Employment Relations Board.

In 1992 President George Bush named him a Member of a Presidential Emergency Board to recommend settlements of labor disputes involving three of the nation's largest railroads.

He was the first recipient and occupant of the American Arbitration Association's J. Noble Braden Chair of Arbitration, has been a member of the Association's Board of Directors since 1987, and has been awarded the Whitney North Seymour, Sr., Arbitration Medal and the Alexander Hamilton Law Citation.

He is a member of the New York Bar and holds memberships in several bar associations and professional societies. With Russell L. Greenman, he is the author of the text, Personnel Administration and the Law, and has written numerous professional articles.