What’s a Nice Organization Like Ours Doing in a World LikeThis?
Authors
Hoyt N. Wheeler
University of South Carolina
Abstract
When the Industrial Relations Research Association (IRRA) came into existence sixty years ago, the nation was just beginning to recover from World War II and a major wave of strikes. All of the mass-production industries were organized. The “labor problem” was very much at the top of the national agenda, and industrial peace was a national priority. This national organization was formed to study, discuss, teach, and research the problems pertaining to human labor in an industrial society. The world into which the IRRA was born was one in which large corporations and powerful labor unions were the major players in industrial relations.1
