2021 Lifetime Achievement Award

The Labor and Employment Relations Association Lifetime Achievement Award is a capstone achievement for lifelong contributors to the field of Industrial Relations and Human Resources, from all perspectives. This award was established in 2000, and awardees are recognized at the LERA Annual Meeting, in conjunction with the Presidential Luncheon.

2021 LERA Fellow Awards (Academic and Practitioner)

The Labor and Employment Relations Association annually bestows the LERA Fellows Award. The LERA Fellows designation is meant to recognize scholars and practitioners who have made contributions of unusual distinction to the field and have been in the profession and field for longer than ten years. The selection committee for the Fellow scholar title considered contributions from all disciplines such as Industrial Relations, Labor Law, Economics, Human Resources, Business, Sociology, Political Science, and Organizational Behavior.

2021 Academic Fellows

2021 Practitioner Fellows

2021 Myron C. Taylor Management Award

The award recognizes outstanding contributions to management within the industrial relations profession consistent with the values and the mission of the LERA. The award commemorates Myron Taylor, Chairman of U.S. Steel in 1937, who signed a collective bargaining agreement with the Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee (SWOC). Myron did not endorse that unions were essential, but instead an unavoidable reality, and his decision to recognize SWOC blazed the trail for the rest of the steel industry.

Edward Potter
USMCA Labor Rapid Response Panel

2021 John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Awards

The Labor and Employment Relations Association annually recognizes outstanding academic contributions to research by recent entrants to the field (recent is defined as receiving terminal degree within the last ten years) with the John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Awards. One award recognizes the research contributions of international and/or comparative labor and employment research, and one award recognizes the research addressing industrial relations/employment issues of national significance.

Emily Twarog, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

For outstanding contributions to research that address industrial relations/employment problems of national significance.

Christian Ibsen, Michigan State University

For outstanding contributions to research that address industrial relations/employment problems of international significance.

2021 LERA Outstanding Practitioner Award

The Labor and Employment Relations Association annually confers the LERA Outstanding Practitioner Award. This award recognizes a distinguished practitioner for unique contributions to labor and employment relations practice over her/his career, consistent with the values and the mission of the LERA.

Lisa Charles
Arbitrator, Mediator, Fact-Finder

2021 James G. Scoville Best International/Comparative IR/HR Paper Award

The Labor and Employment Relations Association annually selects the most outstanding international and comparative employment issues paper as the winner of the James G. Scoville Best International Paper Award, which carries a cash prize. The award was established in conjunction with the Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies at the University of Minnesota to honor retiring professor and long-time member of the LERA, James G. Scoville. Eligible published papers on international and comparative employment issues are considered, including those with empirical material on employment issues from two or more countries, that examine transnational employment-relations phenomena, or that make theoretical contributions using empirical material from a single country with implicit international comparisons.

"Spillover Effects across Transnational Industrial Relations Agreements: The Potential and Limits of Collective Action in Global Supply Chains" authored bySarah Ashwin, Chikako Oka, Elke Schuessler, Rachel Alexander, and Nora Lohmeyer

2021 Kenneth May Media Award

The Labor and Employment Relations Association annually recognizes superior reporting regarding issues of importance to our labor-management community including academics, practitioners, industries, and dispute resolution professionals. This award carries the distinction of the recipient being invited to present at the LERA Annual Meeting on their journalistic body of work.

Hamilton Nolan
In These Times

Jeff Schuhrke
In These Times

Lauren Kaori Gurley
VICE

Noam Scheiber
The New York Times

2021 Thomas A. Kochan & Stephen R. Sleigh Best Dissertation Award

The Labor and Employment Relations Association has established an annual competition for post-doctoral students in the field of industrial relations or related fields such as history, political science, economics, sociology, etc., as long as they are broadly related to employment relations as reflected in the publications and membership of the LERA. The purpose is twofold: (1) to stimulate greater awareness and interest among doctoral students at colleges and universities of the field of industrial relations, and (2) to provide a vehicle by which an outstanding thesis by a doctoral student can be made more widely known to scholars in the field. Each year, the Thomas A. Kochan & Stephen R. Sleigh Best Dissertation Award committee reads thousands of pages of dissertations and determines which papers are the most significant contributions to the body of research in the field.

"Uberizing the Legal Profession? Three Essays on Lawyers in Digital Platform-based Legal Services", authored by Yao Yao at the University of Toronto

"Can Chinese Enterprise Unions Improve Employee Union Identification? Comparative Case Studies of Six Subsidiaries of Foreign Multinational Enterprises" authored by Xiaoming Bao at the University of Montreal.

2021 UCIRHRP Best Paper Award

The University Council of Industrial Relations and Human Resource Programs, UCIRHRP, sponsors a student paper competition at the LERA Annual Meeting. New developments in employment relations, organizational behavior, and social movements call for a closer look at emergent processes, outcomes and organizational forms. The motivation for this special award is to reflect the diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches to researching emergent phenomena in the field. Examples include, but are by no means restricted to new forms of labor market institutions; diversity in organizations; social movements; and international/transnational actors and organizations.

"Flexible Staffing Practices, Unit-level Turnover, and Performance Recovery During the COVID-19 Pandemic", authored by Hyesook Chung at Cornell University