Private company

Labor and Employment Relations Association

Logo: The logo may be obtained from Labor and Employment Relations Association., Non-free logo, via Wikipedia³

American company based in Champaign, founded in 1947¹

The Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) was founded in 1947 as the Industrial Relations Research Association. LERA is an organization for professionals in industrial relations and human resources. Headquartered at the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, the organization has more than 3,000 members at the national level and in its local chapters.² Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

1947Founded¹

HeadquartersChampaign¹
Websitewww.leraweb.org

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The story

The organization was founded as the Industrial Relations Research Association, by labor economists in the post World War II era, who found a need to expand upon discussions taking place surrounding workplace issues. For the first 52 years of the organization, the IRRA was headquartered at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 1999, the organization moved its headquarters to the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Paula Wells became the executive director. The organization was invited to make the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois its home base, which later became known as the School of Labor and Employment Relations in 2006, with LERA past President Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld as its first dean. LERA itself changed its own name to the Labor and Employment Relations Association in 2005, in response to many changes taking place in the field, transitioning from industrial relations to the field of labor and employment relations.

Past presidents

1948 Edwin E. Witte, University of Wisconsin

1949 Sumner H. Slichter, Harvard University

1950 George W. Taylor, University of Pennsylvania

1951 William M. Leiserson, Johns Hopkins University

1952 J. Douglas Brown, Princeton University

1953 Ewan Clague, U.S. Department of Labor

1954 Clark Kerr, University of California

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1955 Lloyd G. Reynolds, Yale University

1956 Richard A. Lester, Princeton University

1957 Dale Yoder, University of Minnesota

1958 E. Wight Bakke, Yale University

1959 William Haber, University of Michigan

1960 John T. Dunlop, Harvard University

1961 Philip Taft, Brown University

1962 Charles A. Myers, MIT

1963 William F. Whyte, Cornell University

1964 Solomon Barkin, Textile Workers of America

1965 Edwin Young, University of Wisconsin

1966 Arthur M. Ross, University of California

1967 Neil W. Chamberlain, Columbia University

1968 George P. Shultz, University of Chicago

1969 Frederick H. Harbison, Princeton University

1970 Douglass V. Brown, MIT

1971 George H. Hildebrand, U.S. Department of Labor and Cornell University

1972 Benjamin Aaron, UCLA

1973 Douglas H. Soutar, Am. Smelting & Refining Co.

1974 Nathaniel Goldfinger, AFL-CIO

1975 Gerald G. Somers, University of Wisconsin

1976 Irving Bernstein, UCLA

1977 F. Ray Marshall, University of Texas

1978 Charles C. Killingsworth, Michigan State University.

1979 Jerome M. Rosow, Work in America Institute

1980 Jack Barbash, University of Wisconsin

1980 Rudolph A. Oswald, AFL-CIO

1982 Milton Derber, University of Illinois

1983 Jack Stieber, Michigan State University

1984 Wayne L. Horvitz, Consultant, Washington, D.C.

1985 Everett M. Kassalow, University of Wisconsin

1986 Lloyd Ulman, University of California-Berkeley

1987 Michael H. Moskow, Premark International

1988 Phyllis A. Wallace, MIT

1989 Joyce D. Miller, ACTWU

1990 Robert B. McKersie, MIT

1991 James L. Stern, University of Wisconsin-Madison

1992 Ernest J. Savoie, Ford Motor Company

1993 George Strauss, University of California-Berkeley

1994 Lynn R. Williams, United Steelworkers of America

1995 Walter J. Gershenfeld, Arbitrator, Flourtown, PA

1996 Hoyt N. Wheeler, University of South Carolina

1997 Francine Blau, Cornell University

1998 F. Donal O'Brien, Arbitrator/Mediator

1999 Thomas A. Kochan, MIT

2000 Sheldon Friedman, AFL-CIO

2001 Magdalena Jacobsen, FMCS

2002 John F. Burton Jr., Rutgers University

2003 Paula Voos, Rutgers University

2004 Marlene K. Heyser, Workplace Law Strategies

2005 Stephen Sleigh, IAMAW

2006 David Lipsky, Cornell University

2007 Eileen B. Hoffman, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service

2008 Anthony Oliver Jr., Parker Milliken, Clark O'Hara & Samuelian

2009 Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2010 Eileen Appelbaum, Rutgers University

2011 Gordon Pavy, AFL-CIO

2012–13 David Lewin, UCLA

2014 Martin Mulloy, Ford Motor CO.

2015 Lisa M. Lynch, Brandeis University

2016 Bonnie Prouty Castry, Arbitrator/Mediator

2017 Janice R. Bellace, University of Pennsylvania

2018 Harry C. Katz, Cornell University

2019 Kris Rondeau, AFSCME

2020 Dennis Dabney, Kaiser Permanente

2021 Adrienne Eaton, Rutgers University

Editors

Milton Derber, University of Illinois, 1948–50

L. Reed Tripp, University of Wisconsin, 1951–56

Gerald G. Somers, University of Wisconsin, 1957–74

Barbara D. Dennis and James L. Stern, Univ. of Wis., 1975–77

Barbara D. Dennis, University of Wisconsin, 1977–89

John F. Burton Jr., Rutgers University, 1989–94

Paula B. Voos, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994–2002

Adrienne Eaton, Rutgers University, 2003–2009

Françoise Carré and Christian Weller, University of Massachusetts Boston, 2010-2014

Ariel Avgar, Cornell University, 2015–2019

Ryan Lamare, University of Illinois, 2020−

Secretary-treasurers

William H. McPherson, University of Illinois, 1948–50

Robben W. Fleming, University of Wisconsin, 1951–53

Edwin Young, University of Wisconsin, 1954–62

David B. Johnson, University of Wisconsin, 1963–72

James L. Stern (Treas.), UW-Madison, 1968–69

Richard U. Miller, UW-Madison, 1973–77

David R. Zimmerman, UW-Madison, 1978–1999

Peter Feuille, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000–2014

Craig Olson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2015–2017

Ryan Lamare, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2018–2019

Andrew Weaver, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2020–

Founding members

Vincent W. Bladen, University of Toronto

Eveline M. Burns, Columbia University

Ewan Clague, U.S. Department of Labor

Milton Derber, University of Illinois

William Haber, University of Michigan

Frederick H. Harbison, University of Chicago

Vernon H. Jensen, Cornell University

Clark Kerr, University of California-Berkeley

Richard A. Lester, Princeton University

William H. McPherson, University of Illinois

C. Wright Mills, Columbia University

Donald G. Paterson, University of Minnesota

Sumner H. Slichter, Harvard University

Sterling D. Spero, New York University

George W. Taylor, University of Pennsylvania

Francis Tyson, University of Pittsburgh

William F. Whyte, University of Chicago

W. Willard Wirtz, Northwestern University

Edwin E. Witte, University of Wisconsin

Harry D. Wolf, University of North Carolina

Dale Yoder, University of Minnesota

Charter members (affiliation at time became member)

Benjamin Aaron, Arbitrator, Los Angeles

Leonard P. Adams, Cornell University

Gabriel N. Alexander, Arbitrator, Detroit

(Mrs.) Jack Barbash, Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcherworkmen of NA

Solomon Barkin, Textile Workers

Irving Bernstein, UCLA

Seymour Brandwein, Bureau of National Affairs

George W. Brooks, Washington, DC

Neil W. Chamberlain, Yale University

Jesse C. Clamp Jr., Florida State University

Bernard Cushman, Labor Bureau of Middle West

Edward L. Cushman, Wayne University

G. Allan Dash Jr., Arbitrator, Philadelphia

John T. Dunlop, Harvard University

Milton T. Edelman, University of Illinois

Marten S. Estey, Cornell University

Tracy H. Ferguson, Esq., Syracuse

Joseph P. Goldberg, Jt. Congressional Comm. on Labor-Mgmt. Relations

Lois S. Gray, Cornell University

Einar J. Hardin, University of Minnesota

James J. Healy, Harvard University

Peter Henle, American Federation of Labor

Morris A. Horowitz, University of Illinois

Harriet D. Hudson, University of Illinois

Arthur T. Jacobs, USNA, New York

Howard W. Johnson, University of Chicago

Jacob J. Kaufman, University of Toledo

Clark Kerr, University of California-Berkeley

Charles C. Killingsworth, Michigan State College

Forrest H. Kirkpatrick, Bethany College

Milton R. Konvitz, Cornell University

Richard A. Lester, Princeton University

Solomon B. Levine, University of Illinois

Kenneth M. McCaffree, University of Washington

Frederic Meyers, University of Texas

James G. Miller, Cornell University

John W. Miller Jr., Ford Motor Co.

Charles A. Myers, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Maurice F. Neufeld, Cornell University

Herbert R. Northrup, Columbia University

Lloyd G. Reynolds, Yale University

Milton Rubin, War Labor Board

Stanley H. Ruttenberg, Congress of Indus. Organizations

Sidney W. Salsburg, University of Wisconsin

Arthur W. Saltzman, Syracuse University

Richard Scheuch, Princeton University

Rosalind S. Schulman, Indus. Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers-CIO

Boaz Siegel, Wayne University

Ruth S. Spitz, Ohio State University

Arthur Stark, New York State Board of Mediation

Jack Stieber, United Steelworkers of America

Ralph I. Thayer, Washington State College

Lloyd Ulman, Harvard University

Martin Wagner, Louisville Labor-Mgmt. Comm.

Morris Weisz, Bureau of Labor Statistics

Donald J. White, Boston College

William F. Whyte, Cornell University

John P. Windmuller, Cornell University

Fred Witney, Indiana University

David A. Wolff, Arbitrator, Ann Arbor

Henry S. Woodbridge, American Optical Co.

David Ziskind, Esq., Los Angeles

From Wikipedia’s article on Labor and Employment Relations Association, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.⁴

Products and brands

At the 2011 January annual meeting, LERA launched the Employment Policy Research Network (EPRN). It originally consisted of about 100 researchers (economists; management, human resources, and labor relations researchers; attorneys, historians and sociologists) from 30 universities, including California-Berkeley, Columbia, Cornell, Illinois, Massachusetts (several campuses), MIT, Michigan, Michigan State, Northeastern, Rutgers, Stanford and UCLA, as well as universities in Canada and the United Kingdom. In March, 2011, the first cohort of doctoral students from MIT and Cornell joined EPRN as graduate student researchers who are sponsored by EPRN researchers. As of May 1, 2011, there were 125 EPRN researchers from 50 universities.

EPRN received start-up funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and Russell Sage Foundation. The EPRN principal investigator is Thomas A. Kochan, George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management at MIT's Sloan School of Management and co-director of both the MIT Workplace Center and the Institute for Work and Employment Research.

EPRN is an employment research repository and virtual collaboration space whose mission is to replace ideology and partisan rhetoric with facts and objective, evidence-based research in discussions of U.S. employment, work and labor. EPRN's goal is to provide the data, research, policy proposals and reasoning to improve national and state employment laws, policies and practices. Ultimately, EPRN realizing its mission means to contribute to healthier and more productive lives of American workers and their families, to promote general economic prosperity and to enable the nation to compete successfully in the global economy. Like LERA, its parent organization, EPRN is non-profit and non-partisan.

EPRN divides the large subject of employment and work into 15 topics and research clusters of 20–40 researchers:

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Employment regulations

Equal employment opportunity

Globalization, employment and labor Standards

Immigration

Industry studies/strategies

Labor and employment law

Labor force demographics/supply

Labor–management relations

Regional economic development/adjustment

Skills, work and technology

Social insurance

Unemployment – jobs deficit/growth

Workers' compensation