LERA 2015 Awards Announced May 2016

Please congratulate these deserving and accomplished LERA 2015 Award Recipients! Awards were presented in conjunction with the
LERA 68th Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, MN, May 26-29, 2016.

You are invited to personally nominate someone deserving to receive a LERA Award at the
LERA 69th Annual Meeting, in Anaheim, CA, on June 1-4, 2017.

Please visit the LERA Deadlines page for complete information about each award, lists of past award recipients,
and nomination forms, which are due by January 15, 2017, or download the "Calls for Awards" below:

Call for Practitioner Award Nominations: https://lera.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/awardscall-practitioners2017.pdf

Call for Scholar Award Nominations: https://lera.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/awardscall-scholars2017.pdf

Call for Student Award Nominations: https://lera.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/awardscall-students2017.pdf

LERA 2015 Award Recipients

Lifetime Achievement Awards

LAA in 2015 to: Castrey, Husted, Kochan, Lewin, and Pruitt

The LERA 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.


Robert Castrey Arbitrator/Mediator (posthumously)	Joan Husted Hawaii State Teachers' Association	Tom Kochan MIT	David Lewin UCLA	Jim Pruitt Kaiser Permanente (Dennis Dabney Pictured)

LERA Fellow Awards (Academic and Practitioner)

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 10 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.

Academic Fellows in 2015: Adams, Amsler, Kleiner, and Ghilarducci

Roy Adams (left),
McMaster University

"... with your lifetime contributions to international and comparative industrial relations, and your influential work on labor policy and industrial relations theory, and freedom of association as a human right."

Lisa Blomgren Amsler (right),
Indiana University Bloomington

"... with your outstanding, lifetime contribution to research that benefits the dispute resolution practitioner. In particular, the committee recognizes the importance of your publication of the first empirical research into the “repeat player effect” in non-union employment arbitration—a body of work that was selected in the refereed paper competitions of the 49^th and 50^th LERA Annual Meetings. The committee also acknowledges that you conducted the most comprehensive empirical evaluation of an employment mediation program in your study of the US Postal Service."

Morris Kleiner (left),
University of Minnesota

"... with your lifetime contributions to the analysis of institutions in the labor market, the influence of labor-management policies on organizations, and the role of labor unions in democratic societies. You are also the world's foremost authority on occupational licensing. In addition you have made significant contributions to LERA, including co-editing two LERA research volumes, convening the labor markets area for over 10 years, chairing the awards committee for multiple years, and serving on the executive board. Your scholarship and service have been exemplary."

Teresa Ghilarducci (right),
The New School for Social Research

"... with your lifetime contributions to academic and policy debates on retirement security, where you clearly are an esteemed expert who is helping to shape our understanding of retirement security and policies to increase the security of American workers.

Practitioner Fellows in 2015: Greenbaum, Heyser, and Mooshegian

Marcia Greenbaum (left),
Workplace Solutions

"... with your long career as a nationally prominent neutral and your commitment to improving the field through research, writing, public speaking, mentoring and leadership."

Marlene Heyser (right),
Workplace Law Strategies

"... with your service as the Director of Labor Relations at the Orange County Transit Authority and following retirement, your vibrant, well respected workplace law practice. Your service to LERA has also been exceptional as a past president, fund raiser and activist willing to take on whatever tasks were needed. Locally, you were also President of OCLERA and Co-Chair of the Annual Labor Law conference for over 20 years."

Eric Mooshegian (left),
International Union of Operating Engineers

"... with your leadership for many years as a Business Agent of the Operating Engineers, helping to keep labor-management peace in the St. Louis community and to develop modern apprenticeship programs for the IUOE. As a long-standing member of the national organization and Gateway Chapter you have served on numerous committees, including the committee that planned the enormously successful St. Louis LERA Conference."

Susan C. Eaton Outstanding Scholar-Practitioner Award

The Eaton award is given annually to a member of the LERA for achievements of distinction as both an academic and practitioner in our field, emphasizing the value of bringing together the academic and practitioner communities.

David Weil (right), US Department of Labor and Boston University

"The multi-disciplinary awards committee was most impressed with how you have combined your excellent scholarship in The Fissured Workplace with your policy work as Administrator of the Wage and Hour division of the U.S. Department of Labor, which pull together your academic and policy interests and expertise in a highly productive way. The decision that your achievements are outstanding, and that you are deserving of this award speaks highly of your work and its contribution to enlightening labor issues and public policy."

John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Awards

2015 Awards Given To: John-Paul Ferguson, Aaron Sojourner, and Xiangmin Liu

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

John-Paul Ferguson (left),
Stanford University

"... for contributions to enlightening labor issues, work on union organizing, employment segregation, career mobility, and the important role of task interdependence and formalized employment policies."

Aaron Sojourner (right),
University of Minnesota

"... for contributions to enlightening labor issues, work on education reform and the impact of unionization in nursing homes and charter schools."

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

Xiangmin “Helen” Liu (left),
Pennsylvania State University

"... for contributions to enlightening labor issues, research on contingent work in China, particularly novel questions and significant efforts to dissect the role of institutional and organizational characteristics in explaining the growth of contingent work."

LERA Outstanding Practitioner Award

The award is for outstanding contributions to the industrial relations profession consistent with the values and the mission of the LERA.

Allison Beck (left), Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service

"...The committee was particularly impressed with the importance of your appointment as the first woman to serve as the Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, marking your long and distinguished career in the labor relations field. Under your active direction, FMCS has embraced a culture of innovation, experimentation, and operational excellence. Your unveiling of “FMCS 2.0” has been a clear signal that FMCS is looking to the future and is ready to help labor and management to meet the challenges of the 21st Century workplace and economy.

As the nation’s chief mediator, you have helped to resolve major labor disputes involving health care, communications, and public sector pensions. In addition, you are bringing back the FMCS’s National Labor-Management Conference in August 2016 and have served as an ambassador for the agency’s enhanced efforts in innovation, providing alternative dispute resolution training and approaches to government agencies, labor and management both in the US and abroad. Through the use of technology to reach the widest possible audience, helping organizations effectively leverage the opportunities that are presented in today’s multi-generational workplace, offering cutting-edge conflict resolution processes and services, and a recognition that collective bargaining still offers the best hope for achieving productivity, competitiveness and good, middle class jobs, your contributions epitomize the values and mission of the LERA."

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

The Scoville Best Paper award is an award given annually to a member of the LERA for authoring an international and comparative employment issues paper designated by LERA International Awards Committee as the “most outstanding.”

Co-Winners in 2015: Valeria Pulignano and Jasmine Kerrissey

Valeria Pulignano (left), Katholieke University Leuven, "Flexibility and Security Within European Labor Markets: The Role of Local Bargaining and the ‘‘Trade-Offs’’ Within Multinationals’ Subsidiaries in Belgium, Britain, and Germany"

"The paper argues that the effectiveness of flexicurity strategy depends on institutional variation at sector and company level. It focuses on structural power at subsidiary level in 12 subsidiaries in 3 countries. The Committee Members were impressed with the paper’s conceptual grounding, robust research design and careful qualitative analysis that convincingly drew out macro-micro dynamics and that went beyond the role of national institutions in explaining trade-offs.

Jasmine Kerrissey (right), University of Massachusetts, Amherst, "Collective Labor Rights and Income Inequality"

“The paper argues convincingly that the repression of labor rights reduces the capacity of worker organizations to effectively challenge income inequality through market and political processes in capitalist societies. While previous studies have demonstrated the centrality of worker organization to explaining income inequality, much of this is focused on developed countries. The originality of Jasmine Kerrissey’s work is that it uses panel data for 100 developed and less developed countries from 1985 to 2002, and draws out carefully any comparative regional effects. It is clearly theorised with rigorous statistical analysis and makes an argument that has important significance for policy.”

LERA Media Award

The Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) annually recognizes superior reporting regarding issues of importance to our labor-management community including academics, practitioners, industries, and dispute resolution professionals. In the past, the LERA has awarded Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and Ken May of Bloomberg BNA as its recipients for their respective contributions. This award carries the distinction of the recipient being invited to present at the LERA Annual Meeting on their journalistic body of work.

2015 Recipients Include: Lydia DePillis and Barb Kucera

Lydia DePillis (left pictured next to Steven Greenhouse), Houston Chronicle -

for outstanding reporting on employment and labor topics while at the Washington Post.

Barb Kucera (right), WorkDay Minnesota -

for outstanding reporting on employment and labor topics while working as editor of Workday Minnesota since its launch in 2000, and prior to that as editor of The Union Advocate.

LERA Labor-Management Exemplar Award

2015 Recipients Include: Dale Belman and Sean McGarvey

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This special award was made in 2015 in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of employment relations.

Dale Belman (right),
Michigan State University and Institute for Construction Economic Research

Sean McGarvey (left),
North American Building Trades Association

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

Each year, the Kochan-Sleigh committee reads thousands of pages of dissertations and determines which papers are the most significant contributions to the body of research in the field.

2015 Co-Winners: Mark Gough and Chunyun Li

Mark Gough (left), Pennsylvania State University, "Employment Rights Enforcement: Forums, Actors, and Outcomes"

"His dissertation is a groundbreaking study examining the institutional contours of dispute resolution and law in the individual employment rights system. One of the central concerns for the field of labor and employment relations is its continued relevance in an era of declining collective bargaining coverage and increased individualization of the employment relationship. Mark’s dissertation tackles these issues head on and brings an analysis rooted in the industrial relations tradition to bear on understanding the role of a new set of institutions and actors in the system and a new set of problems relating to workplace conflict resolution."

Chunyun Li (right), Rutgers University, "Unmaking the Authoritarian Labor Regime: Collective Bargaining and Labor Unrest in Contemporary China"

" ...[her research] is a great, rare ethnography on Chinese labor activism. It examines a rising pattern of collective bargaining in China which is not conducted by official trade unions but initiated by workers’ spontaneous strikes or protests. Yet, workers’ collective actions and bargaining are not really “spontaneous”. However, how workers organize these activities and how employers and government respond are largely a myth. Chunyun’s dissertation therefore opens the “black box” of independent worker mobilization, organizing and bargaining in China and shed light on the dynamic interactions between workers, labor NGOs, employers, and government."

Honorable Mentions: Quianyun Xie and Sarah Young

Quianyun Xie, Chinese Academy of Social Services, "The Impact of Family Characteristics on Reactions to Compensation Incentives"
Sarah Young, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, "Economic Development Policy and Foreign Direct Investment in the American States: Assessing their Impact on Private Sector Unionization"

LERA Chapter Awards

LERA recognizes the accomplishments and contributions of local LERA chapters with three levels of awards including Chapter Merit Awards, Outstanding Chapter Awards, and Chapter Star Awards.

LERA Chapter Star Award 2015: Long Island LERA

Long Island LERA was awarded the most prestigious LERA Chapter Award in 2015 for its significant contributions in the areas of Outstanding Programming, Community Involvement, Chapters Helping Chapters, Consistent Chapter Excellence, Chapter Communication, and Chapter to National Relations.

Long Island LERA continues its long-time excellence in providing consistent, quality programming in 2015, with four quarterly meetings, three of which include a dinner speaker, and an annual conference. This all day event featured two panel discussions, one on "What the NLRB's New Deferral Policy Under Babcock and Wilcox Means to Arbitrators, Unions, and Labor Practitioners" and a second on "Public Sector Developments 2015: Mayor DiBlasio and the NYC PBA -- Return of the Slow Down?" The keynote at this event was Maggie Gray, Adelphi University Associate Professor and author of Labor and the Locavore - The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic. This chapter offered CLE credits through the Nassau County Bar Association.

This Chapter offers a robust awards program, including the awarding of financial scholarships to graduate students involved in Labor and Employment/Human Resource degrees at area colleges and a lifetime achievement award. This year, they awarded three scholarships in the amount of $1,000 each, and named longtime labor representative Robert Archer as the "MacGregor" Award recipient, the lifetime achievement award for leaders in the field.

The Chapter continues to maintain and grow its membership with 145 members and each year both members and non-members attend their events. They regularly update their website (http://www.lilera.org) and communicate with members by mail and electronically with quarterly newsletters. Much of the growth and robustness of this chapter can be attributed to its long tradition; it's been in existence for over 40 years, beginning as a Chapter of the Industrial Relations Research Association. Their Executive Board meets four to five times a year, and draws from labor, management, academia, and neutrals for its membership, with regular presentations from all of these constituencies in addition to government and political figures. They have governance and membership that spans all racial and ethnic groups and regularly publish a membership directory to their paid members. In addition, their officers are members of the larger LERA organization, and each year two or more of them attend the LERA Annual Meeting.

LERA Chapter Merit Awards

Atlanta LERA received Merit Awards for Outstanding Programming and Consistent Chapter Excellence. Notable accomplishments include outstanding programming such as co-sponsoring the very successful Georgia Labor-Management Conference and bringing in the acclaimed speakers. In 2015, NLRB Regional Attorney Lisa Henderson, State Rep. Taylor Bennett on GA RFRA Act, FMCS Director Allison Beck, and LERA Past President Martin Mulloy all spoke at Atlanta LERA events. This chapter maintains excellent communications with its members using email announcements and their website at GALMC.org.

Mid-Michigan LERA received a Merit Award for Outstanding Programming. Notable accomplishments included robust programming featuring a variety of speakers, consistent meetings, and inclusion of all constituencies. The 2015 programs featured the documentary film-makers of "Second Shift: From Crisis to Collaboration" along with state politicians and other key stakeholders, an update on "Medical Marijuana and Employment Law" from Attorney Jeff Donahue, an exploration of "Gender Differences in the Evaluation of Fairness" from Dr. James Dulebohn, the topic of "What Does the Minimum Wage Do?" from Dr. Dale Belman, an exploration of "UAW Auto Negotiations" offered by Mark Strolle from the UAW, "Emergency Managers & Labor Relations" from Dr. Shea Howell, Michigan Supreme Court Justice Richard Bernstein shared his journey, and a panel of arbitrators discussed "Current Issues in Labor Arbitration".

Northwest (Seattle) LERA received Merit Awards for Consistent Chapter Excellence and Outstanding Programming. Northwest LERA consistently has several hundred members who attend its annual conference, this year topping 500 attendees. Northwest LERA also sponsored one of its locally featured sessions at the LERA Annual Meeting, organizing the session, and assisting speakers with travel expenses.

OC (Orange County) LERA received Merit Awards for Member Innovation and Chapter to National Relations.

Oregon LERA received Merit Awards for Chapters Helping Chapters and Consistent Chapter Excellence. Notable accomplishments include assisting a startup LERA group in Eugene, Oregon, holding additional programs in the Eugene/Springfield area to attract people from across the state, holding consistent board meetings, maintain strong programming such as conducting three breakfast programs in the Portland Metro Area and two lunch meetings in the southern Oregon area. Topics included: "Legal Landscape Relating to Marijuana & the Workplace," "Employer Policies/Rules", "Arbitration Panel and Video". This Chapter continually supports the Oregon State Labor Education Research Center with a donation to its annual programs, and partners with both PERC/LERC and the Arbitrator's conference for programs. Officers are consistently national members and the Chapter has increased its participation in the national conference each year and sponsors its incumbent president's participation in the national conference.

RU LERA received Merit Awards for Chapter Startup and Member Innovation. This young chapter is one of the first to target students as their main source of membership. They are headquartered at the Rutgers University.

TERRA received Merit Awards for Chapter to National Relations and Consistent Chapter Excellence.