 The "Tamiment" name had been closely associated with the Socialist Party and New York University was not perceived as friendly to the interests of organized labor – a pair of potential stumbling blocks which were neatly alleviated by the alternative name and official support of the CLC.The Wagner Labor Archive hired its first employee, Larry Cary, in 1978 and made use of grant money from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities to help launch the project.Succeeding Cary at the helm of the Labor Archive was labor historian Debra Bernhardt, who later took over for Dorothy Swanson as head of the combined Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives.