On Saturday, Dec. 10, we lost America’s premier labor negotiator, William Julian Usery Jr. He died in Eatonton, Georgia. He was 92.

Usery has forgotten more about collective bargaining than most people will ever know. He understood deep in his veins how essential collective bargaining is to the American economy. He was a good man, and a good and well-respected friend of mine, and a man who taught me immensely about how to unravel tension and bring two warring sides together to reach a workable relationship.