Robert R.R. Brooks; Expert on Labor

Robert R.R. Brooks, 86, a former federal government official and expert on labor economics who had been a dean and professor at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. He wrote two books on unions, “When Labor Organizes” in 1937 and “Unions of Their Own Choosing” in 1938. Brooks was dean of economics at Yale University in 1935. He was dean and professor of economics at Williams from 1945 to 1963, retiring as a professor in 1971. He was a deputy administrator of the Office of Price Administration in World War II. A volume of his memoirs, “A Tumult of Years,” came out in 1980. In Nyack, N.Y., on Wednesday.