2026 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.

2026 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.

2026 Academic Fellows

2026 Practitioner Fellows

2026 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.

Johnnie Kallas
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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

Duanyi Yang
Cornell University

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

2026 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.

Catherine Hutchinson
California State University Employees Union

2026 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.

Joseph J. Jelincic III
California State University

2026 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. 

2026 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.

DCDC Best Paper Award

“The Impact of Work From Home on Disability Employment and Productivity” 
Octavio Aguilar, University of Michigan

2026 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.

Ian Kullgren
Bloomberg Industry Group

Susan C. Eaton Research Grant Award

"Artistic Labor in the Age of AI" 
Deepa Kylasam Iyer, Cornell University

"How do Teacher Unions Mobilize to Protect Academic Freedom in the pre-K-12 Public Education Sector? 
Anh Lam, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, LER

"Socioeconomic Stratification in Hiring With Artificial Intelligence" 
E. Paisley Shultz & Caraline S. Malloy, City University of New York, Graduate Center