LERA 2025 Award Recipients

Please congratulate these deserving and accomplished LERA 2025 Award Recipients!
These awards will be recognized at the general membership meeting and awards ceremony at the LERA 77th Annual Meeting, June 12-15, 2025 in Seattle, Washington!
Click here to nominate someone deserving for a future award!
2025 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.
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Beth Schindler Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service |
Charles Killingsworth (posthumously) University of Michigan |
William Spriggs (posthumously) AFL-CIO |
2025 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.
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2025 Academic Fellows
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Erin Kelly MIT |
Janice Fine Rutgers |
Susan Houseman W.E. Upjohn Institute |
2025 Practitioner Fellows
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Matt Capece United Brotherhood of Carpenters |
F. Ray Marshall University of Texas |
Renée Mayne Arbitrator/Mediator |
2025 Susan C. Eaton Outstanding Scholar-Practitioner Award
The Labor and Employment Relations Association has established an award in honor of Susan C. Eaton, scholar and practitioner and LERA member who passed away in 2003. The Susan C. Eaton Outstanding Scholar-Practitioner 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.
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John Logan San Francisco State University
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Robert Bruno University of Illinois
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2025 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.
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Jaz Brisack Inside Organizer School
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2025 Myron T. Taylor Management Award
The Labor and Employment Relations Association established the Myron T. Taylor Management Award to commemorate Myron Taylor, Chairman of U.S. Steel who in 1937 signed a collective e bargaining agreement with the SWOC (the Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee), which John H. Lewis had been instrumental in founding. Myron Taylor did not endorse the proposition that unions were essential to the long-run survival of the country, but were instead “ ... an unavoidable reality in the future of steel production, and that continued resistance would only delay the inevitable while exposing the company to considerable political and economic risks.” But regardless of Taylor’s motive, to his credit, Taylor made his decision to recognize the SWOC when the leaders of the rest of the steel industry persisted in their vigorous resistance to unionization. Indeed, the organizing campaign in the rest of the steel industry – known as Little Steel – that followed the recognition of the UWOC by U.S. Steel resulted in a series of violent confrontations that have been termed “The Last Great Strike” in American labor history.
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Matt Bodah University of Rhode Island
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2025 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.
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Anna Mori - Explaining varieties of social solidarity in supply chains: Actors, institutions and market risks distribution in outsourced public services
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Manuel Rosaldo - Top-Down and Bottom-Up Formalization: Waste Pickers’ Struggles for Labor Rights in São Paulo and Bogota |
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2025 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.
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Margie Mason The Associated Press |
E. Tammy Kim The New Yorker
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Robin McDowell The Associated Press |
2025 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.
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"Beyond Unemployment: An Investigation of Social Policies to Empower Workers in a Changing World of Work" by Lukas Lehner at the University of Oxford
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"Mobilising work and demobilising labour under contemporary monopoly capitalism" by Francesco Massimo at Sciences Po Paris (honorable mention) |
"Essays on Management Opposition and Unionization" by Patrick Nüß at Kiel University (honorable mention) |

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DCDC 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. |
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“Understanding Market Dynamics in China: Sectoral Differences in Employment Precarity and Labor Income Inequality” Zhipeng Zhou, Cornell University
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2025 LERA Chapter Awards
The Labor and Employment Relations Association annually recognizes the accomplishments and contributions of local LERA chapters with three levels of LERA Chapter Awards including Chapter Merit Awards, Outstanding Chapter Awards, and Chapter Star Awards.
2025 LERA Chapter Star Awards
- New Jersey LERA is awarded the Chapter Star Award in 2025 for its significant contributions in the areas of Outstanding Programming, Member Innovation, Community Involvement, Chapters Helping Chapters, Consistent Chapter Excellence, and Chapter Communications.
2025 LERA Outstanding Chapter Awards
- Northwest LERA is awarded the Outstanding Chapter Award in 2025 for its significant contributions in the areas of Outstanding Programming, Community Involvement, Consistent Chapter Excellence, Chapter Communications, and Chapter to National Relations.
- Maryland LERA is awarded the Outstanding Chapter Award in 2025 for its significant contributions in the areas of Outstanding Programming, Consistent Chapter Excellence, Chapter Communications, and Chapter to National Relations.
- DC LERA is awarded the Outstanding Chapter Award in 2025 for its significant contributions in the areas of Outstanding Programming, Member Innovation, Community Involvement, and Chapters Helping Chapters.
2025 LERA Chapter Merit Awards
You are invited to personally nominate someone deserving to receive a LERA Award at the LERA 78th Annual Meeting, in Minneapolis, MN, on May 28 - 31, 2026.
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, 2026, or download the "Calls for Awards" below:
Call for Practitioner Award Nominations: https://lera.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/awardscall-practitioners2024.pdf Call for Scholar Award Nominations: https://lera.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/awardscall-scholars2024.pdf Call for Student Award Nominations: https://lera.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/awardscall-students2024.pdf
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