An Ode to Walsh and Healey – The Last But Perhaps Least of the Immortals of Wage and Hour

“Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony
Side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord, why don't we?”

--Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder, Ebony and Ivory

There are some names that are inextricably linked like Laurel & Hardy or Gilbert & Sullivan. Such is also the case in the world of wage & hour. In a prior blog, we covered the titan legislators who sponsored the construction wage law, the Davis-Bacon Act (“DBA”). See https://www.awrcounsel.com/blog/2024/8/26/how-to-become-immortal-in-the-government-contracts-world-the-origins-of-the-davis-bacon-act. And we also subsequently covered service contracts by examining the sponsors of the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act (“SCA”). See https://www.awrcounsel.com/blog/2025/5/12/a-brief-tribute-to-the-congressional-sponsors-of-the-mcnamara-ohara-service-contract-act-and-almost-60-years-of-history. This leaves us to finally fill in the details of the legislative sponsors of the Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act (“PCA” or “Act”). As we discussed recently, the PCA is the wage law which covers federal government supply and manufacturing contractors. See https://www.awrcounsel.com/blog/2025/5/27/back-to-basics-a-short-primer-on-the-walsh-healey-public-contracts-act-pca.

A no less authoritative source for all human knowledge than Wikipedia, says:

The Act was based on Executive Order 6246, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 10, 1933, which required government contractors to comply with codes of fair competition issued under the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). This became moot when the Supreme Court struck down the NIRA in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walsh%E2%80%93Healey_Public_Contracts_Act_of_1936#:~:text=The%20Act%20was%20named%20for,United%20States%20(1935). Thus, the PCA emerged at a moment in time, like today, where broad assertions of executive power were being challenged in the courts.

The two legislative sponsors of the PCA, Senator David I. Walsh and Representative Arthur D. Healey, were both from Massachusetts. Let’s do Sen. Walsh first, since he led the more colorful life.

Time Magazine, in a profile of Sen. Walsh, described him thusly:

A bachelor, he is tall and stout. A double chin tends to get out over his tight-fitting collar. His stomach bulges over his belt. He weighs 200 lbs. or more. Setting-up exercises every other day at a Washington health centre [sic] have failed to reduce his girth. He is troubled about it. His dress is dandified. He wears silk shirts in bright colors and stripes and, often, stiff collars to match.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_I._Walsh#cite_note-Tommasini,_360-67. Wikipedia again has a very well-done piece on Sen. Walsh’s life. Walsh practiced law in Massachusetts after graduating from Boston University Law School. He became the first Irish and Catholic Governor and Senator of Massachusetts. He was elected to the Senate in 1918, lost his reelection contest in 1924, but returned to the Senate in 1926.

During his terms as a Democratic Senator, he was at odds with parts of the New Deal, particularly Roosevelt’s court packing proposal, and was a well-known isolationist and America Firster. Id. He opposed the Lend-Lease Program to aid Great Britain and made speeches against the federal bureaucracy and big government. He was Chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Education and Labor. It was from that position that he became the sponsor of what is variously known as either the Walsh-Healey Act or the PCA, the labor standards law which bears his name and provides his enduring legacy.

The coda to Walsh’s career was a sex and spy scandal involving a gay brothel that he supposedly visited which had been compromised by Nazi spies. The sensationalist newspaper, the New York Post, without much evidentiary support, said Walsh had been seen talking to Nazi spies. It  was one of the first public “outings” of an American politician. Walter Winchell, the most prominent journalist of his time, called it the "Brooklyn's spy nest, also known as the swastika swishery.” Id.[1] Walsh who never married, was dogged by accusations of homosexuality which, according to his biographers, he could not effectively refute because he was gay. Id. Caught up in this anti-gay witch-hunt, Walsh was defeated by Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. in the 1946 election and died one year later at age 74, following a cerebral hemorrhage.

The other co-sponsor of the PCA was Representative Arthur D. Healey of Massachusetts. Healey also went to Boston University Law School and was a Boston lawyer who enlisted to serve in the Army during World War I. He returned to private practice and was elected to the House of Representatives as a Democrat in the 1932 landslide defeat of President Hoover. He assumed office in 1933. As again Wikipedia notes: “His name was attached to one significant piece of New Deal legislation, the 1936 Walsh-Healey Act, which regulated hours and working conditions for employees working on government contracts.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Daniel_Healey. He subsequently resigned his congressional seat  to accept an appointment to serve  as a US District Court Judge in Massachusetts. Healey served as a federal judge until his death in 1948 at age 58.

With this blog, I complete my coverage of the six legislative sponsors of the eponymously named major labor standards laws covering construction, supply, and service contracting.

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[1] I digress, but Walter Winchell was a personal friend of my father-in-law, Dr. William Herbert Berry, a Park Avenue New York surgeon. My father-in-law’s papers include a letter from Winchell congratulating him on the birth of his daughter, now my wife. The story goes that Winchell even announced her birth on his nationally syndicated radio show. Winchell has a prominent role in Philip Roth’s fictional historical novel about the 1930’s rise of the fascist America First Movement, The Plot Against America, a book which has enjoyed a revival of interest and new fans during the Trump era.