Jobs Well Done 

“There was always a job to do,” said David Twomey, the Boston College professor and renowned labor law expert, as he sat in his Fulton Hall office and reflected on the work ethic that has defined his life. At just ten years old, the industrious child of Irish immigrants in Boston began earning money by hauling neighbors’ groceries in his red Radio Flyer wagon. Later, to pay his BC tuition, he worked as a laborer on campus. His hands helped build McElroy Commons.

When I met with him on a sunny day last spring, Twomey, at eighty-six, was a few months into retirement after fifty-six years on the faculty of what today is the Carroll School of Management. Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, he had yet to pack up his office, which was scattered with testimonies to his storied career. The hulking bookshelves were lined with the thirty-five editions of textbooks on labor, employment, and business law that he’s authored, as well as volumes upon volumes of decisions that Twomey has made in the more than two thousand labor disputes he has arbitrated since 1974. Nearby, a small decorative sign bore a quote by John Locke: “Where law ends, tyranny begins.”

On another shelf was a model railroad boxcar, a nod to yet another of his labor specialties. Such is his reputation for careful deliberation and civility that, beginning in 1986, six US presidents have appointed Twomey to a record ten Presidential Emergency Boards. These are panels convened to quickly resolve—or “referee,” as Twomey put it to me—rail and airline industry disputes that threaten to interrupt essential transportation services. Most recently, President Biden named Twomey to a panel that managed to avert a national railway strike in 2022. He chaired two of those emergency boards, a role that demanded something he does best: building rapport before rendering decisions. “The first thing is to make friends,” Twomey said. In his office was a black-and-white photo of the longtime Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill ’36 raising a beer with Republican President Ronald Reagan. The photo was a gift from a BC student who evidently absorbed the affable arbitrator’s advice for relationships in work and life: “Be smart and be nice,” he said. 

The third-born of five children, Twomey put away his childhood wagon and got his first formal job as soon as he could get his working papers. He started off as a dishwasher at a local restaurant, and worked his way up to pouring coffee and sweeping the floor. Over the course of his teenage years, Twomey would go on to sell newspapers on the streets of downtown Boston and work at a nearby Wonder Bread factory, which exposed him to unions and primed his eventual interest in arbitration. After graduating from BC High in 1956, he served on active duty in the US Marine Corps. These were the days when “work was work,” he said. “You came home dirty.”

Following two years in the Marines, Twomey enrolled at BC, where he studied economics and marketing, worked on campus, and met his future wife, Veronica Lynch, who had a job in development. One day he wooed her with a ride home in his “junky old Ford,” and sharing frappes after work turned into sharing a life. They married in 1967.

Twomey graduated from BC in 1962, then earned his MBA at UMass–Amherst. In finding his career path, he seized opportunities and made his own. He placed an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal describing himself as a “Jesuit-trained MBA looking for responsibility,” and was hired by a financial services company to sell tuition plans. At age twenty-three, he took a position teaching American economic history at Suffolk University. He discovered that leading a classroom suited him. “I would just write something on the board and get something interactive going,” Twomey recalled. “It was exciting. It went well.”

Twomey never stopped teaching. He lectured at Simmons College while studying at BC Law, then joined the Boston College faculty upon earning his JD. He balanced his arbitration work with a full professorship that started in 1978. He and Veronica’s three children all went to Boston College. His office was filled with framed photos of family trips to ski mountains and national parks, and of Twomey standing with his uniformed son on the BC High football field.

As we spoke, Twomey gazed out the window to the grassy quad below, as beaming senior students, all dressed up for end-of-semester events, posed for photos together. “It’s a beautiful view,” he said, smiling.

True to form, Twomey plans to stay busy during retirement. In his next chapter, he’ll be working to publish his first novel, which is inspired in part by the Irish-Australian folk song “The Wild Colonial Boy.” He recently uncovered a manuscript he started more than half a century ago. “I had completely forgotten about it,” Twomey said. “I had it retyped. I’ve completely repolished it. Now I need to find an agent. I’m sure that will be a challenge.”

It’s one he’s up for, of course. He’d never leave a job undone. ◽