Despite Rockefeller’s withdrawal of financial support in the mid-1930s, Industrial Relations Counselors continued its research and publishing activities in the decades that followed under the leadership of such distinguished individuals as Murray Latimer, Albert Regula, Carroll French, Howard S. Kaltenborn, and Richard A. Beaumont, among others. “During the first 25 years of its existence, IRC served a number of the most prominent business organizations in the country,” wrote Scheinberg. “These included Peoria Caterpillar, Chase National Bank, Crane Co., Columbia University, Harvard University, General Foods, the New York Times, Phelps Dodge Inc., Radio Corporation of America, Time Inc., U.S. Steel, and Western Union.”
In 1943 IRC created the Management Course in Industrial Relations, in response to requests from companies whose managements believed that sound, up-to-date employee relations contribute substantially to a company’s growth and profitability. The course, first held in Absecon, New Jersey, but later given annually through 1983 in Williamsburg, Virginia, was intended to supplement in-house management development and training programs and to strengthen participants’ skills in dealing more effectively with the broad range of industrial and employee relations issues by focusing on them in terms of evolving sociopolitical focus.
Shortly after concluding its research work in industrial pension systems and unemployment insurance, IRC tackled the issue of collective bargaining. In its 1945 publication National Collective Bargaining Policy, the organization set forth such concepts as the freedom to organize or not to organize, the right of free expression, the prohibition against secondary boycotts, and the requirement of secret ballot elections to designate bargaining representatives. These concepts provided focus for discussion before the enactment of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, and many of these provisions were adopted in the act. Also in 1945, IRC founded fellowships in industrial relations at six universities in memory of Clarence J. Hicks, former IRC board chairman.
Through all its work, IRC took a prominent stand on social issues that affected the employment relationship, based on where research showed the society heading—not in resisting change or maintaining the status quo. IRC made one of the earliest contributions to the area of research in equal employment opportunity with its 1959 study Employing the Negro in American Industry. Emergency Disputes: A National Labor Policy Problem, published in 1961, analyzed the remedies that had been proposed for dealing with national emergency disputes and evaluated the emergency provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act. (The appendix lists a sampling of the topics and reports IRC worked on over the years.)
In 1962, IRC organized its first Annual Symposium on Advanced Research in Industrial Relations to correlate university and government research in the area of employee/management relationships with the experience and problems of the business community. Management, Automation, and People, which was published in 1964, focused on how technological change and automation of blue-collar functions affect the practice of management. In 1973, IRC established a professorship in industrial relations at the Colgate Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia.
The significant shift in the nature of industrial/employee relations from the first half to the second half of the 20th century is significantly reflected in the evolution of IRC. Originally, industrial relations and human resource representatives were seen as employee representatives, charged with presenting workers’ views to management. As the field of personnel management/human resources evolved, however, the focus shifted so that these departments are now responsible for relaying management’s policies and viewpoints to the general workforce.
Copyright © 2001, 2006 by Industrial Relations Counselors, Inc. All rights reserved.