The Evolution of Human Resource Management Sandy Reed, SPHR, and Myrna L. Gusdorf, MBA, SPHR

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Learning ObjectivesBy the end of this module, students will:Recognize the interrelationship of social, political and economic issues in the history of American labor.Link the evolution of contemporary human resource (HR) practices to events in labor history. Assess the effect of current conditions on the practice of HR management.Formulate hypotheses regarding future HR practices.SHRM 2010*

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The Early Years of American LaborSession 1

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The Origins of Labor: The Colonial EraLabor for the New World:Indentured servantsSlavesReligious minoritiesPolitical dissidentsConvicts

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Society and Work in the Colonial EraNorthern colonies:Independent craft workersTradesmenMerchantsFarmersSouthern colonies:AgricultureSlavesSHRM 2010*

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The Revolutionary EraEmerging ideology of independence. Wide acceptance of Common Sense by Thomas Paine.Some efforts to organize labor:In 1778, New York City journeyman printers unite and gain increase in wages.In 1785, New York City shoemakers strike for three weeks.Adam Smith published Wealth of Nations in 1776.SHRM 2010*

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Growth of the Nation: Late 1700sEarly 1800sAgriculture vs. industrialization.Growth of textile industry in the north.Invention of the cotton gin.Increased importation of slaves in the South.SHRM 2010*

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Early Union ActivitiesUnion agitators were blacklisted.Cordwainers case of 1805:Guilty of conspiracy.Injurious to trade.Conspiracy charges reversed in 1842:Commonwealth v. Hunt. Movement for a 10-hour workday.By 1830, one-third of New Englands labor force were children under the age of 16.

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The Civil War and Late 1800sCivil War causes:Slavery.Reluctance of Northern workers to compete against slave labor.Dramatic industrial growth in the North.Growth of trade unionism.Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.Passage of Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.Sharecropping replaces slavery.SHRM 2010*

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End of the 1800sPublic support for free land became the Homestead Act of 1862.Klondike stampede.Movement from farm to city.Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

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A New CenturyNot long after the 20th century began...SHRM 2010*

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Labor UnrestIncreased industrialization resulted in labor unrest.Employment-at-will doctrine.Blacklists.Yellow-dog contracts.Upton Sinclairs The Jungle. Work accidents shocking toll.Lochner v. New York.

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Labor Unrest1910: Los Angeles Times building bombed during a strike.Secretary-treasurer of the International Union of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers arrested in the bombing.Arrest said to be an attack on unions in particular and labor in general.

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Labor UnrestSweatshop labor.Triangle Waist Company Fire of 1911:146 young women and girls died because the factorys doors were locked to prevent theft.Catalyst for government involvement.SHRM 2010*

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Commission on Industrial Relations: The Walsh Report FindingsLumber workers in the Northwest were paid 20 cents an hour for a 10-hour day.

Seasonal unemployment affected tens of thousands of people in Pacific Coast cities. Only the fortunate averaged more than a meal a day.

Migrant laborers in California worked in temperatures up to 105 degrees on farms where growers refused to supply them with water. SHRM 2010*

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Discussion QuestionsWhy did the government get involved with labor conditions?

Of the Walsh Reports findings, what parallels can be made to the modern-day workplace?SHRM 2010*

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The New Century: From the Roaring 20s to 1950s ProsperitySession 2

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Work and Management in the New CenturyLarge-scale immigration swells the U.S. labor force.Industrial era in full swing.Fredrick Taylor and the concept of scientific management.Henry Ford and the moving assembly line.World War I and the resulting labor shortage.SHRM 2010*

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Politics and the CourtsWhat was happening to labor politically and in the courts?States passed child labor laws, but the laws lacked enforcement.The Supreme Court upheld yellow-dog contracts.Court injunctions were used to break strikes.Business rights were defined as property.SHRM 2010*

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The Roaring TwentiesIndustrialization and urbanization.Mass-production, prosperity and consumer goods.Ford: Eight-hour workday, five days per week, $5 per day.Prohibition and bathtub gin.Charles Lindberg and Babe Ruth.Rise of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Immigration restrictions. SHRM 2010*

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1920s: What about labor?Steel industry eliminates the 12-hour workday.Hawthorne studies.Human relations movement in management.

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The Stock Market Crash and the Great DepressionOctober 1929: Stock market crash.1933: Stocks down 80 percent.25 percent unemployment.Drought farm migration.Foreclosure and homelessness.SHRM 2010*

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1930s Depression and RecoveryNorris-LaGuardia Act of 1932:Prohibited anti-union injunctions.Prohibited yellow-dog contracts.National Labor Relations Act of 1935:Right to form unions.Right to collective bargaining.The rise of the industrial relations professional. Continued union violence.SHRM 2010*

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The New Deal and Economic RecoverySocial Security Act of 1935.Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA):Minimum wage - $.25/hour.40-hour workweek.Overtime at time-and-one-half.Standards for child labor.

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1940 and World War II1939: War begins in Europe.1940: First American peacetime draft.December 7, 1941: Attack at Pearl Harbor. America enters the war.Labor shortage.Women and African Americans flood defense industries.SHRM 2010*

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After the War1945: End of World War II.Growing unrest between labor and management.1947: Labor-Management Relations Act (Taft-Hartley Act):Restricted union activities. Allowed for right-to-work states.Women fired as soldiers return to work.SHRM 2010*

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What About Management?Specialization of functions within organizations.Professional industrial relations worker. Research:Taylors scientific management.The Hawthorne studies.Maslows hierarchy of needs. Labor no longer merely a factor of production.The rise of the personnel administrator.

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Managing PeopleEducation for industrial relations:1945: University of Minnesota established the Industrial Relations Center.1946: Cornell University established the School of Industrial and Labor Relations.Personnel management organizations:1945 American Society of Training Directors.Changed to American Society for Training and Development in 1968.1948 American Society for Personnel Administration.Changed to Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in 1989.SHRM 2010*

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The 1950s and ProsperityEmployment at will.Unionization: 35 percent of private-industry employees.Peacetime industry:Housing.Consumer goods.Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959:Financial disclosure for unions.Union members bill of rights.

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Life in the 1950sTelevision.Technology and science:1951: Univac (Universal Automatic Computer). 1957: Launch of Sputnik.1954: Brown v. the Board of Education. SHRM 2010*

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What Do You Think?Between the Roaring 20s and the post-war prosperity of the 50s, what event do you think had the most effect on HR? Why? What still carries over to todays HR practices?

What parallels do you see between this period and contemporary times?SHRM 2010*

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American Labor Civil Rights and Contemporary HRSession 3

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1960s and Civil Rights Racial unrest.Civil Rights Act:Protection from discrimination.Protected classes.Equal Pay Act:Ended gender discrimination in compensation.Affirmative Action.Age Discrimination in Employment Act:Protected ages 4065.Evolving human resources.SHRM 2010*

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Life in the 1960s 1962: Rachael Carsons book Silent Spring.1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated. 1965: American troops sent to South Vietnam.1966: Medicare is enacted.1969: Two American astronauts walk on the moon.SHRM 2010*

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1970s Employment LawLegislation1970: Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)1970: Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA)1974: Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)1978: ADEA amendment1978: Pregnancy discrimination protectionCase Law1971: Griggs v. Duke Power 1978: Concept of sexual harassmentSHRM 2010*

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Life in the 1970sEconomic woes.Oil embargo and gas shortage.Environmental concerns.Feminist movement.Roe v. Wade.U.S. troops come home from Vietnam.Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974.1976: The nations bicentennial.Apple introduces first consumer computer.1978: HRCI begins certifications for HR professionals.SHRM 2010*

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Working and Legislation in the 1980s1981: Air traffic controller strike.Economic distress:Mass layoffs.Savings and loan crisis.Stock market plunged 22 percent on Black Monday.1985: Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA).1988: Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN).

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Life in the 1980s1986: Another amendment to ADEA.1986: Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson.1986: Immigration Reform and Control Act.1988: Employee Polygraph Protection Act.1989: ASPA becomes Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).Erosion of the employment-at-will doctrine.Microsoft introduces MS/DOS.The emergence of AIDS in society and in the workplace.

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Employment Legislation in the 1990s1990: Older Workers Benefit Protection Act.1990: Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).1991: Revision of the Civil Rights Act.1993: Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).1994: Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA).1996: Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.SHRM 2010*

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Life in the 1990sIncreasing workplace protection for employees.Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings.The Gulf War continued.Rise of the dot-com industry.SHRM 2010*

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The New Millennium Technology.Privacy.9/11: Terrorism and homeland security.Immigration and diversity.Economic conditions.Rising costs of health insurance.Globalization and offshoring.Impending retirement of Baby Boomers.

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The Evolving Role of Human Resource ManagementEarly labor:No human resource management.Onset of industry: Manage factors of production.Unions:Industrial relations professional.End of WWII:Peacetime industry and prosperity.Personnel administrator.Civil Rights and Litigation:Human resource manager / complianceGlobal Business:Strategic human resource management

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Current Business Issues and the Effect on HRTechnology changesPrivacyWorkplace securityGlobalization; offshoringImmigrationAIDS epidemicAging workforceEmployment regulationLitigationSHRM 2010*

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What About the Contemporary HR Practitioner?One now reads of six varieties of leadership, four approaches to negotiation, and thirty-four personality types that the shrewd practitioner of human resources should discern. Gardner (2006)

The days of simply maintaining personnel files and advising on hiring, firing and compensation are long gone for HR professionals. Today they fulfill a variety of roles that require knowledge and competencies in areas that were foreign to them in the past. Salvatore et al. (2005)

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What Do You Think?Why is the future of HR so closely related to the political, social and economic events of American society?

Which of the events reviewed do you believe had the greatest influence on the workforce as we know it today? Why? What other events could be included?

Which has had the greatest influence on the practice of HR? Why?SHRM 2010*

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* * *European explorers began arriving in the New World in 1492. Word reached Europe that the New World was rich in resources, sparking an interest in colonization. A wave of immigrants followed. Most colonists arrived as bound labor--either slaves or indentured servants. With little economic opportunity in the old country, many were willing to bind themselves to indentured work for five to seven years in exchange for payment of their passage. For indentured servants, freedom was granted at the completion of their contract. Slaves had no such opportunity.

Other sources of immigrant labor included religious minorities, political dissidents and convicts sentenced to labor.

Source:Illinois Labor History Society. A Curriculum of United States Labor History for Teachers. Retrieved 9/14/08 from www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/curricul.htm#2.

*The Northern colonies created a society composed of independent craft workers in cottage industries, tradesmen, merchants and farmers.

The Southern colonies focused primarily on agriculture, made possible through development of slave labor. Slavery was introduced into the Virginia area as early as 1619 (Illinois Labor History Society).*Historians have noted the importance of support for independence that came from the common people. Thomas Paines pamphlet, Common Sense, was written for the masses and was overwhelmingly accepted, selling 150,000 copies in three printings--indicating the high level of interest the average person had in the idea of independence. Most Revolutionary soldiers were ordinary working people: farmers, laborers, fishermen, apprentices, women and slaves.

Efforts to organize labor to improve working conditions became more common, although organization wasnt new; there is evidence of workers guilds in the American colonies as far back as the mid-1600s.

In 1776, Adam Smith published Wealth of Nations, which outlined economic theories of free trade without government interference and introduced the concept of division of labor. His ideas would significantly change the nature of work during the Industrial Revolution (Illinois Labor History Society).

*There was political struggle among those who hoped the new America would remain a rural, agricultural-based society, and those eager for the growth of industrialization. Like it or not, industrialization was coming. The first textile mill was built in Rhode Island in 1790; it started with nine workers, all under the age of 12. From there, the textile industry grew rapidly in the North, and sweatshops formed. Yet in 1800, most Americans still lived on farms and wore clothing made in the home.

In the South, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, making the production of cotton faster and more profitable, and greatly increasing the demand for both land and slave labor. From 1790 until Congress banned the importation of slaves from Africa in 1808, the United States imported 80,000 Africans. Despite federal prohibition, the slave trade did not stop; the smuggling of slaves continued until just before the Civil War. By 1860, one in three southerners was a slave (Schur).

*These were challenging times for those who tried to organize labor; employers kept blacklists of union agitators to make sure they would remain unemployed. The courts were no help to workers. In 1805, journeymen cordwainers (shoemakers) in Philadelphia went on strike and were arrested and tried for criminal conspiracy. In a landmark decision, the court found the defendants guilty, finding that the strike was a conspiracy of workmen to raise wages that was criminal at common law. This was the first union tried for conspiracy, but others followed. Tailors in Philadelphia were also found guilty of conspiracy, as were hatters in New York City. In the hatters case, the courts added that attempts to organize workers were injurious to trade. Conspiracy charges against unions held fast in the courts until 1842 when, in the case of Commonwealth v. Hunt, the court ruled that unions, as such, were not illegal conspiracies.

Working conditions in the early 1800s were harsh and the days long. In many areas, children under the age of 16 were the bulk of the labor force. There was no federal law proscribing the length of the workday; 12- and 13-hour days were typical. In addition, there was no federal law regulating the minimum ages of children in the workforce; this was left up to the states. In 1847, New Hampshire became the first state to make 10 hours the legal workday. In 1848, Pennsylvania made 12 the minimum age for employment in commercial occupations.

Sources:Forbath, W.E. (1991). Steinfeld, R.J. (1992). Illinois Labor History Society.

*Slavery was one cause of the Civil War, but it wasnt the only one. Northern workers did not want to complete against slave labor; there was fear that the slave system might spread across the country, with slaves taking the jobs of ordinary working men.

The military needs of the war spurred dramatic industrial growth. With so many able-bodied men engaged in the war, labor was in high demand--yet working condition remained deplorable. Unionization efforts among the trades began to spread to more skilled factory workers.

In 1860, 20,000 New England shoemakers were successful in their strike against working conditions. Their cause was supported by President Abraham Lincoln, who said, Thank God we have a system of labor where there can be a strike.

In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by Lincoln, and in 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. Finally, slavery was illegal in the United States. Freed men needed jobs, however, and the agricultural economy of the South needed labor. A sharecropping system grew from labor agreements formed between planters and laborers. It was a simple system, where the planter provided the land and the supplies and ex-slaves and poor whites supplied the labor. Both would share the profits. It was believed that sharecropping would meet the labor needs of the planter and make the newly freed slaves self-supporting. Unfortunately, the agreement heavily favored the planters; some claimed it was just slavery by another name.

Sources:Illinois Labor History Society.Vickers, N. (1999). *At the end of the 19th century, American life was changing. For some time, there had been a push for free land that poor people could acquire to farm and thereby become self-supporting. The movement for free land increased in momentum and was supported in the 1860 Republican Party platform. With Lincoln as the new president, the Homestead Act passed, giving 160 acres of land to any adult citizen or intended citizen who had never borne arms against the U.S. government. Claimants were required to improve the land by building a house and cultivating the land, and after five years and a modest registration fee, they were entitled to the property free and clear. Besides helping the poor to become self-sufficient, the Homestead Act was also intended to move citizens westward.

For those seeking more adventure, gold was discovered in Alaska in 1872, resulting in the Klondike Stampede. The Klondike Stampede was at full-speed by the end of the 19th century.

Another major societal shift was the movement of Americans from farms to cities. By 1900, less than a quarter of the American population were farmers; most Americans now made their living in factories, shops and mills. This was a trend that would continue.

Though the century ended with the abolishment of slavery, race relations were clearly delineated by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson, when the court put its stamp of approval on the doctrine of separate but equal. As a result, white supremacy ruled the South until the 1950s, fully supported by the courts. Some historians have referred to the first half of the 20th century as the era of American apartheid (Friedman, 2002).

For more information about the Homestead Act (1862), go to www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=31. To review the actual Republican party platform of May 1860, go to http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=149.

For more information about Abraham Lincolns presidency, go to www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/al16.html.

For more information about the Gold Rush and Alaska, go to www.alaskascenes.com/alaskagold.html.

* *Early 1900 was a period of significant industrialization and corresponding labor unrest. The employment-at-will doctrine was commonly accepted, allowing employers the right to fire without cause. Blacklists were commonplace, as were yellow-dog contracts requiring workers to agree to not engage in union activities as a condition of employment. The typical factory worker worked 10 hours a day, six days a week for $1.00 - $1.50 per day. Skilled workers might make twice as much, but women, children and African Americans made considerably less. There was no such thing as entitlement to minimum wage, a limited workday, safety standards or workers compensation. Government as a whole was largely quiet about the conditions of the American workforce.

In 1906, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a searing account of work in American meatpacking plants. To the shock of the American public, he described meat stored in rat-infested rooms; the companies put out poisoned bread to kill the vermin, and subsequently, rats, bread and meat all ended up as processed meat products. In one scene, he described how workmen in the cooking rooms sometimes fell into large vats and were boiled until all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durhams Pure Leaf Lard.

It was not just the meatpacking industry where there was trouble. Work accidents were commonplace early in the 20th century; in 1907 alone, 3,000 workers died in coal mines and 4,500 in railroad accidents.

In spite of scandalous working conditions, workers found little salvation from the law or the courts. In 1897, New York State passed a law that regulated bakeries and restricted bakery workers from working more than 60 hours a week or 10 hours a day. Bakery owner Joseph Lochner was accused of requiring a worker to work more than 60 hours in a week, for which Lochner was convicted and fined $50. He appealed his conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the landmark case of Lochner v. New York, the Supreme Court ruled that the New York bakery law was unconstitutional because it interfered with the freedom of workers and their bossesthat it denied the right of employers and employees to enter into whatever contract of labor they chose. To the detriment of workers, the Lochner decision held until the case was overturned in 1937.

Sources: Sinclair, U. (1906). Friedman, L.M. (2002).

*Strikes became more common and disruptive in the early 1900s. On Oct. 1, 1910, in the middle of a strike to unionize metal workers, the Los Angeles Times building was bombed. Many workers were trapped inside; 20 workers were killed. Brothers James and John McNamara were charged in the bombing; John was secretary-treasurer of the International Union of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers at the time. Organized labor saw the McNamaras arrests as an attack on unions in particular and labor in general. The McNamara brothers were defended at trial by Clarence Darrow, who referred to them as pawns in a vast industrial war. The brothers eventually pled guilty and were sentenced for their crime. *Shameful working conditions at the turn of the century have been well-documented. Low wages, excessively long hours, and unsanitary and dangerous working conditions were the hallmarks of sweatshops. There was little union organization of garment workers before 1911 because many were young immigrant women, intimidated by their alien surroundings. Those who complained or attempted to organize were fired, sending a strong message to those remaining.

Just before closing time on March 25, 1911, fire broke out on the top floors of the Triangle Waist Company in New York City. 146 of the 500 employees died, most of them young women and girls as young as 15. Survivors testified of their helpless efforts to open the doors to escape. Many believed the doors were deliberately locked--a common practice that the owners claimed was done to prevent employee theft.

Eight months after the fire, factory owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, who were charged with manslaughter based on the locked doors, were acquitted of any wrongdoing. Twenty-three individual civil suits for wrongful death were later brought against the owners, who again claimed no responsibility. They eventually settled the cases and paid $75 per lost life. This gave little satisfaction for the families of those lost, but the incident changed the course of labor history.

Source: Cornell University. *In the wake of the Los Angeles Times bombing and the Triangle Waist Company fire, the government could no longer ignore labor unrest. A Commission on Industrial Relations, chaired by Frank P. Walsh, was created by Congress on August 23, 1912. The Commissions mandate was to study work conditions throughout the U.S. The Commission listened to testimony from a wide range of individuals between 1912-1915 and published its massive 11-volume report, The Walsh Report, in 1916.

It concluded:

Where labor organization is lacking, dangerous discontent is found on every hand

This country is no longer a field for slavery, and where men and women are compelled, in order that they may live, to work under conditions in determining which they have no voice, they are not far removed from a condition existing under feudalism or slavery.

How much influence the Walsh Report actually had on U.S. politics is still debated. Some historians argue that the Commissions report influenced the War Labor Board and the authors of New Deal labor legislation. Others claim the Commissions findings were politically motivated and that its liberal leanings caused Congress to ignore its findings. Regardless, the Walsh Report still stands as an early attempt by the government to analyze the relationship between employers and their employees.

Source:American Libraries Internet Archives.

*Why did the government get involved with labor conditions?

In the early 1900s, a number of ugly incidents brought working conditions into the public eye; Upton Sinclairs The Jungle horrified the public by exposing conditions in meatpacking plants, and the Triangle Waist Company fire was graphically depicted in the press. Public pressure was exerted on the government to do something about deplorable working conditions, and there was concern from Congress that continuing labor unrest would be detrimental to the economy as a whole.

Of the Walsh Reports findings, what parallels can be drawn to the modern-day workplace?

Please refer back to the previous slide. - 20 cents per hour for logging could be compared with contemporary employees working minimum-wage jobs. - Seasonal unemployment still occurs today, particularly in the agricultural industry where workers often work for low wages. - Though we now have OSHA regulations for workplace safety, working conditions in agriculture are still problematic, particularly for immigrant labor and especially for undocumented aliens.

Students may have other suggestions. * *The early 20th century was characterized by enormous growth in industrialization and the countrys labor pool. Large factories previously found only in the textile industry became more common in a variety of industries. This industrialization required more workers, and the immigrant population swelled as a result. Railroads expanded, decreasing the cost of transportation. Workers continued to organize for better working conditions.

The advent of machine power, mass production and lower transportation costs all fostered the development of big organizations, which brought a whole new perspective to the workplace. For the first time, U.S. businesses had to think about managing such large operations and the workers hired to run them. How should large industries be organized? How should factors of production--including labor--be managed? These were questions that were never considered when the U.S. economy was primarily agrarian or small-scale craftsmen and merchants.

Frederick Taylors publication of The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911 was the precursor to the practice of modern management. Taylor, studying employees at the Midvale and Bethlehem Steel companies in Pennsylvania, was consistently appalled at the inefficiency of the workers. He found that employees used different techniques to do the same job, and claimed that some were prone to taking it easy on the job. He believed factory output was only about a third of what it could be. He spent more than two decades working to improve efficiency and searching for the one best way to do a job. He borrowed ideas on division of labor from Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations and applied scientific methods to jobs on the factory floor. His methods achieved improvements in productivity in the range of 200 percent or more. As startling as his discoveries were, what may have been even more significant from his work was his affirmation of the function of management the authority of managers to plan and control the work of employees. Its no wonder Taylor is considered the father of modern management.

Couple Taylors efficiencies of production with the moving assembly line pioneered by Henry Ford in 1913 for mass-producing Model Ts, and its not difficult to imagine how significantly manufacturing was changing. The increase in productivity was phenomenal and likely just in time, because the start of World War I in 1917 caused a severe labor shortage and a need for even higher productivity.

This was really the first time in U.S. history that employers experienced labor shortages while facing the high demand for goods and services to run a war. Workers soon realized that if they did not like their working conditions or pay, they could easily change employersor demand more from their current one. As a result, there was a rapid growth of unions, with membership doubling to 5 million workers.

Source:Robbins, S.P., & Decenso, D.A. (2001).

*In spite of the growing labor need, this was not a particularly good time for workers. There was no federal law against child labor, although most of the industrial northern states had passed laws protecting young children from oppressive labor. When challenged, the courts generally upheld the laws as constitutional. However, there was no enforcement of these laws in the North, and Southern states had no effective child labor laws at all. In 1900, most spinners in cotton mills were under the age of 14. It wasnt until 1917 that Congress finally passed a child labor law--but it was struck down by the Supreme Court just one year later. The Court said the issue was a purely local matter to which Federal authority did not extend.

Union organizers had no protection in the courts either. The courts continued to uphold the right of organizations to require workers to sign yellow-dog contracts promising not to engage in union activity.

Court injunctions became the commonplace tool for strike-breaking. Within two weeks from the start of a strike of ladies garment workers in Chicago, 1,000 picketers were arrested. Arizona passed a law allowing peaceful picketing and forbidding injunctions against strikers, but the Supreme Court quickly overturned it. The majority opinion written by Chief Justice William Howard Taft said, Business is property and the scurrilous, libelous acts of the picketers destroyed property in a way that the state could not condone. (Friedman, L.M., 2002)

*Some historians claim nothing much happened in the 1920s. The war was over; it was a time of prosperity and there were no major catastrophes--at least not yet. It was a time of significant change in American culture, however. It was the era of prohibition, bathtub gin and larger-than-life heroes like Charles Lindberg and Babe Ruth. Industries surged with mass production. As Calvin Coolidge said, The business of America is business.

Urbanization continued at an increasing pace. Wages were an average of $5 per day. Henry Ford instituted the eight-hour workday and the five-day workweek. Mass production lowered prices and made consumer goods widely available. Americans bought radios, appliances and ready-made clothes. In 1925, Fords Model T cost less than $300--a modest price by the standards of the day. Most Americans had never had it so good.

For some, it was a time of increased rights; women, for instance, gained the right to vote. For others, that was not so. The 20s saw a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, who fiercely opposed immigration, Catholics, Jews, foreigners, city dwellers and anyone else who wasnt a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. This kind of rising intolerance resulted in severe immigration restrictions between 1921 and 1924. The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of European immigrants to 2 percent of its population already living in the U.S. East Asians and Asian Indians were restricted entirely, though there were no restrictions on immigration from Latin America. The act was strongly supported by union leaders, who believed immigrants were stealing American union workers jobs (Cheek, J.S., 2005 and Whipps, H., 2008).

Discussion: This might be an appropriate time to ask students to discuss any parallels they see between the 1920s and current times.

*Ford had moved to an eight-hour workday; however, not all industries agreed, and unions continued to press for better working conditions. It wasnt until 1923 that the steel industry finally agreed to eliminate the 12-hour workday.

Perhaps the most significant workplace issue that came out of the 1920s was the Hawthorne studies conducted at Western Electric from 1924 to 1933. A series of studies conducted by Elton Mayo was intended to determine the relationship between the level of illumination in the factory and worker productivity. A group of workers were singled out for the study, and their productivity level was charted as the lighting in the workroom changed over time. Results indicated that when the level of light increased, productivity increased. Researchers assumed the increase in productivity was due to better lighting. To their surprise, however, they found that when they decreased the level of lighting, productivity continued to increase. There was no correlation between productivity and light levels.

This prompted researchers to investigate other factors affecting worker output. A number of changes were made in the workplace, all positively affecting productivity. At the conclusion, researchers were unsure if the productivity improvements were the result of the introduction of rest periods, shorter working hours, wage incentives, the dynamics of smaller workgroups, or the special attention the workers received. But what they did know was that management influence had a profound effect on workers. Instead of treating workers like an appendage to the machine, as organizations had been doing (particularly in light of Fredrick Taylors theories of scientific management), the Hawthorne studies demonstrated the beneficial effect of motivational influences. This gave rise to the human relations movement in management, with concern for such issues as job satisfaction, group norms, worker participation and effective leadership. Finally, employees were becoming more than just another factor of production (Anteby, M., and Khurana, R.).

*Throughout the 1920s, an economic boom took stock prices to unprecedented levels. Between 1920 and 1929, stocks more than quadrupled in value. Many investors believed the boom times would never end and borrowed heavily to invest in the market. The boom did end, however, and in October 1929, stocks started to slide. They didnt stop until 1932-33; when they hit bottom, they were down 80 percent from their highs of the late 1920s. Industry slowed to a crawl, and unemployment reached 25 percent in 1933. An additional 25 percent of workers had their hours and wages cut.

At the same time, drought struck middle America. As the land dried out and the wind picked up, huge dust storms swirled away the topsoil, devastating what had once been fertile farmland. It is estimated that by 1934, 100 million acres of farmland had lost all or most of its topsoil to the relentless wind.

As the double-whammy of drought and depression hit the country, unemployed urban residents homes were foreclosed and farmers were forced off the land that could no longer sustain crops. Thousands were homeless (Ganzel, B.).

Other web sites about the stock market crash and the Great Depression:

Wattenberg, B. The First Measured Century Timeline. PBS. www.pbs.org/fmc/interact.htm

Timeline: Events: Stock Market Crash. www.pbs.org/fmc/timeline/estockmktcrash.htm

*As bad as things were, recovery from the Depression brought significant changes for American labor. Anti-union court injunctions and yellow-dog contracts were outlawed by passage of the Norris-LaGuardia Act in 1932. That was just the beginning. On July 5, 1935, President Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), also known as the Wagner Act, one of the most significant labor management relations statutes ever enacted. Section 7 of the act defines substantive rights of employees:Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities, for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.

American workers now had the right to form unions and bargain collectively. This ability required employers to negotiate labor contracts and deal with union employees, giving rise to the new industrial relations professional--the precursor to todays human resource manager.

In spite of legal authorization and industrial relations professionals, union rights were still not easily acquired or always peaceful. In south Chicago on Memorial Day in 1937, police attacked an unarmed crowd of men and women who were supporting a strike between the Steel Workers Organizing Committee and Republic Steel, killing 10 and injuring 80 others. After the Memorial Day Massacre, employees went back to work without union recognition or other gains (Mondy, R.W., 2008; Illinois Labor History Society).

*For much of history, people had worked on farms with extended families; this provided economic security when they were unable to work. But with urbanization and industrialization, American life was fundamentally changed. By 1930, 56 percent of Americans lived in cities. Farming was no longer the majority occupation, and the economic crisis of the Depression left most Americans--both urban and rural--with no old-age safety net. This was the backdrop against which the Social Security Act was written. The original act provided for retirement benefits for only the worker and was funded as it is today--by equal payments from the employer and the employee (Social Security Administration).

More income security was provided to Americans by the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938. This guaranteed most Americans a minimum wage of twenty-five cents an hour. After years of Depression-era unemployment and low wages, twenty-five cents an hour sounded pretty good indeed! The law also set todays 40-hour workweek and provided for overtime payment of time-and-one-half for hours worked in excess of 40. The law also provided regulation of child labor, setting minimum ages for employment and limiting work hours.

The 1930s was a remarkable decade for American labor. With the passage of union rights, Social Security and the FLSA, many of the issues that plagued workers for decades were seemingly resolved. It had to feel like Franklin Roosevelts political theme song, Happy Days Are Here Again, had come true (Mondy, R.W., 2008).*World War II began in Europe in 1939. To be prepared, the United States passed the first peacetime draft of military personnel in 1940, although the U.S. did not get involved in the war until the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. During the war years, American Armed Forces increased from 800,000 men in December 1940 to 12.3 million in June 1945. A significant portion of American workers were out of the factories and off to war at a time when industry needed increased labor to build war resources.

Women and African Americans flooded the civilian workforce to alleviate labor shortages. Young, unmarried women had always participated in paid employment, but once married, it was expected that a womans job was in the home and not on the factory floor. For the first time, the marriage bar against married women in employment declined. The number of employed women rose from 11 million to nearly 19 million during the war years. It was not without difficulty. Although the War Labor Board demanded equal pay for equal work, employers frequently assigned women to lower-paid assembly jobs or simply reclassified jobs to escape equal pay. Regardless, thousands of women worked in defense factories where they learned arc welding, draftsmanship and tooling skills--all exclusively male trades before the war. To reduce absenteeism, the federal government funded workplace amenities such as in-plant training and cafeterias. Kaiser and Boeing opened child care facilities next to their factories. The employment of women during the war years established the foundation for dramatic change in womens roles and set the stage for the post-war feminist movement.

African Americans, who had faced discrimination and constricted roles in the pre-war labor force, now enjoyed new opportunities and better jobs. Almost 10 percent of southern African Americans moved to northern cities, where jobs were available and wages were higher. The change of southern African Americans from rural powerlessness to urban empowerment accelerated dramatically during the war years and continued for decades after. Some historians claim that the modern civil rights movement did not begin in 1954 with Brown v the Board of Education, but in the early 1940s when African Americans were finally able to start a broadly based liberation movement.

Many servicemen and urban workers enjoyed an unprecedented rise in their standards of living during the war. Between 1930 and 1945, real wages grew by 27 percent. There was now money to buy shoes and clothing, pay the rent, and put food on the table. For many, the war was a time of opportunity, not limitation. World War II not only defeated Nazi power, it also defeated the Great Depression (U.S. Department of the Interior).

*As the war ended, the main concern was to sustain the wartime prosperity that pulled so many Americans out of the poverty of the Great Depression. Most business leaders wanted to end wartime controls as soon as possible, but this didnt always sit well with labor. As a result, there was growing tension between labor and management that erupted into a series of strikes beginning in late 1945. Although no one realized it at the time, this may have marked the height of union strength and social solidarity during the 20th century, because it proved to be the final episode in the great cycle of industrial confrontations that began with the railroad strikes of the 1870s.

Some claim that every action has a reaction that seeks to create equilibrium. This may well have been true of union power in the 1940s with the passage of the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947, or Taft-Hartley Act. The Taft-Hartley Act tried to balance managements position with the rights granted to labor in the 1930s under the Wagner Act. The Taft-Hartley Act restricted some union activities and allowed states to pass right-to-work laws that granted employees union rights without the need to join a union.

Union or otherwise, the labor force changed as the war ended. When veterans--mostly male--returned home, they were eager to re-enter the workforce. Employers often fired their female employees simply to create job openings for the returning veterans. Without protective legislation, employment decisions based on sex, race or national origin were common practice.

Sources: Illinois Labor History Society. A Curriculum of United States Labor History for Teachers. www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/curricul.htm#2.

World War II and the American Home Front. United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service. www.nps.gov/history/nhl/themes/World%20War%20II%20Homefront.pdfthe workforce to alleviate labor shortages.

Mondy, R. W. (2008).

*The workplace changed at the end of the war, and so did management. As organizations grew, management functions became specialized: marketing, operations, finance and, of course, personnel. The industrial relations professional, the forerunner of todays HR manager, had existed since before the war, but their primary focus was to manage personnel for increased productivity. Productivity goals, union management, government mandates like FICA and FLSA, and the human relations movement resulted in the multiple responsibilities that typify human resource management today.

As the idea of personnel management grew, researchers continued to study how best to manage labor. Today, we are light-years away from Taylors scientific management, with its specialized tasks and one best way of doing a job. The Hawthorne studies showed a clear link between productivity and employee satisfaction; and in 1943, Abraham Maslow published his research on motivation, describing a hierarchy of needs. All of this significantly challenged the practice of regarding employees as merely factors of production.

Note to Instructor: This class has already reviewed Taylors scientific management and the Hawthorne studies, so students should be well-versed in those areas. If they are unfamiliar with Maslow, explanation should be added here.

*The 1940s brought the study of industrial relations formally to academia. The focus began on the relationship between unions and employers, but slowly evolved to the study of behavior management and the management of a competency-based workforce. The focus on union activity was appropriate for the time period. However, in response to the ever-changing dynamics of the workforce, the study of industrial relations evolved into todays human resource management and encompasses the range of employment activities and not just unions.

The 1940s also brought about the development of organizations to provide resources and support for personnel managers.

The History of ASTD. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://www.astd.org/ASTD/aboutus/history/.

About the Society for Human Resource Management. Retrieved September 26, 2008, from www.shrm.org/about/.*The 1950s was an era of rebuilding and prosperity after the war years. With thousands of servicemen back in the workforce, American industry expanded to meet peacetime needs, and Americans began buying goods not available during the war. Highway construction built roads to new homes in the suburbs, and the baby boom was on.

The overarching characteristic of the American workplace was the presumption of employment at will and the federally protected right of workers to unionize. Organized labors philosophy that workers were stronger when they banded together resonated in a country of war veterans, who had witnessed the power of collective action in the military and who had been trained to protect and look out for their comrades-in-arms. By the mid-1950s, 35 percent of all employees in private industry were union members.

The only significant employment regulation that came out of the 1950s was the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, which required financial disclosure from unions and spelled out a Bill of Rights for Members of Labor Organizations designed to protect certain rights of individuals in their relationships with unions (Bradley, B., 1998).

*Life changed in the 1950s when television became the dominant mass media. Financial prosperity brought television sets into 20 million American homes.

Besides television, technology caught the publics eye with the invention of Univac, the first commercial computer made in the U.S. It used 5,200 vacuum tubes and weighed 29,000 lbs! Its memory capacity was 1,000 words of 12 characters in length.

This may seem laughable today, but Americans were smug, thinking we had the worlds best technology. It was a stunning blow when in 1957, Russia launched Sputnik, the worlds first space satellite. In response, the U.S. Department of Defense immediately provided funding for the Explorer project. The project launched the first U.S. Explorer satellite the following year.

In education, the Supreme Court ordered school desegregation in Brown v. the Board of Education. One year later, African American Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger. The civil rights movement was in full-swing, and it would have significant impact on the American culture and workplace.

*

* *The 1960s started with racial unrest characterized by violence and race riots in major U.S. cities. Remember, it was 1954 in Brown v. the Board of Education when the Supreme Court ordered the country to desegregate schools with all deliberate speed. Now its 1960, the start of a new decade, and segregation is still common practice, especially in the Southern states. African Americans justifiably wondered how long all deliberate speed meant; it took 10 years. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed. The law included Title IX, which prohibited discrimination in education, and Title VII, which prohibited employment discrimination based on a persons race, color, religion, sex or national origin. This law gave us our first protected classes. This, however, was only the beginning of protected civil rights.

In the previous year, Congress took a stand on gender discrimination in compensation by passing the Equal Pay Act. This law prohibited gender-based compensation practices and required equal pay for equal work. It ended the employment practice of recruiting and hiring for womens positions or mens positions with disparate compensation schedules.

The new civil rights laws would change discriminatory practices in the future, but merely prohibiting future discrimination does not correct the effects of past discrimination. Minorities, particularly African Americans, had a long history of disadvantage in the workplace, characterized by menial jobs and low wages. To encourage parity and create a more level playing field, President Lyndon Johnson signed Executive Order 11246 requiring businesses with government contracts and those guilty of past discrimination to take affirmative action to correct past discriminatory practices and bring more minorities into the workplace. The law allows employers to give preference to qualified minority applicants if minority workers are underrepresented in the organization. Some organizations responded by establishing hiring quotas for minorities, giving rise to claims of unfair practices and reverse discrimination against white applicants. More than 40 years later, affirmative action is still controversial.

In 1968, another protected class was added to the list when Congress passed the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. This protected workers between the ages of 40 and 65 and made it illegal to make hiring or firing decisions on the basis of age.

Compliance with antidiscrimination laws required employers to devise more sophisticated personnel policies and procedures to ensure that they did not base employment decisions on prohibited criteria and to enable them to defend their decisions if challenged.

HR professionals became partners in workplace cultural change that required them to train managers and supervisors to conform to the new legal mandates, to develop new policies for reporting and investigating discrimination claims, and to ensure validation of tests and other selection criteria. Because of the importance of the new laws and the potential penalties to employers found to have violated them, the HR function began to increase in importance and visibility.

Salvatore, P., Weitzman A., & Halem, D. (2005). How the law changed HR. HR Magazine, 13, 50, 47-56.

Skyle, M. (1995). The origins of affirmative action. Retrieved 9/29/08 from www.now.org/nnt/08-95/affirmhs.html.

Affirmative Action. Retrieved 9/29/08 from www.dol.gov/dol/topic/hiring/affirmativeact.htm.*Although most of us think of the of the 1970s as the beginning of the environmental movement, it really started in 1962 with the publication of Rachael Carsons book Silent Spring. Carson decried the use of pesticides--particularly DDT--and described a spring made quiet as birds, animals and insects were destroyed by hazardous chemicals. For the first time, people began to question the promise of better living that came from the chemical industry. Since 1935, DuPonts advertising slogan proclaimed, Better Things for Better LivingThrough Chemistry. DuPont countered the skepticism at the 1964 Worlds Fair with their exhibit The Wonderful World of Chemistry, which included up-beat song-and-dance presentations and models from the House of Good Taste.

Americans were stunned on November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Tex. Life came to a virtual standstill as Americans gathered around television sets and watched the continuous four-day coverage that extended from the first unverified reports of the presidents shooting on Friday until his burial at Arlington National Cemetery the following Monday. Nielsen ratings estimated that 93 percent of all televisions in the nation were tuned to the continuous coverage, which included a live broadcast of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, President Kennedys assassin. All three networks preempted their regular schedules and cancelled all advertising. Estimates place the total cost to the networks at $40 million, with $22 million lost in commercial ad revenue over the four-day period.

Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president after Kennedys death. Problems were heating up in Southeast Asia, and in 1965, Johnson sent U.S. troops into Vietnam. American military remained involved in the Vietnam conflict until the fall of Saigon in 1975. As with President Kennedys assassination, television played a key role in the Vietnam conflict. The medias continuous coverage on the evening news with daily tallies of war dead played a significant role in the publics negative perception of the Vietnam War.

On a more positive note, some health care security was granted to older Americans with the passage of the Medicare Act in 1966. The decade ended with heightened national pride and interest in space exploration when two American astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Buzz Aldrin, landed on the moon and planted an American flag in lunar soil.

*The 1970s continued the legislative trend giving more rights to employees. It started with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which allows consumers access to their credit report and requires employers that make adverse employment decisions based on a persons credit report to provide the individual a copy of the report and an opportunity to counter adverse information.

Worker safety and retirement security was regulated by Congress with passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) and the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Under OSHA, employers are required to eliminate dangerous and unsafe conditions in the workplace or face fines and sanctions. ERISA regulates employee benefits plans in the areas of participation, vesting and funding. Compliance with these two laws is complex--so much so, in fact, that many organizations created separate safety and benefits groups within their HR departments.

Besides the passage of new laws, some existing employment laws were amended. The upper-age limit for protection under the ADEA was raised from age 65 to 70. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, passed in 1978, was an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. This prohibited discrimination in employment based on pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions and classified pregnancy discrimination as gender discrimination under the Civil Rights Act.

Two far-reaching court decisions significantly changed the practice of HR. In the first, Griggs v. Duke Power, the court recognized adverse impact for the first time and established two critical points for the employer: 1, that discriminatory employment practices need not be intentional to be illegal; and 2, when such practices present an adverse impact on minority populations, employers have the burden of proof to demonstrate that the employment requirement is directly job-related.

Following an increase of women in paid employment that began in the 1960s, the 1970s saw the rise of the feminist movement with significant social change in the years to come. The term sexual harassment entered American culture in the mid-1970s; the concept first appeared in case law in 1978, although it was not firmly established in law until the Supreme Court heard the case of Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson in 1986. (Salvatore, P., Weitzman, A., Halem, D., 2005).

*The economic prosperity of the 1960s ended abruptly in 1973 when oil-producing OPEC nations embargoed the United States. The abundant supply of cheap gasoline that had enabled Americans to build an automobile culture based on drive-through windows, where you could buy anything from fast food to a funeral service, dried up as Americans waited in long lines to purchase gas. Tight oil supplies spurred inflation, with sharply rising prices and a 12 percent rise in the consumer price index. Unemployment rose to 9.2 percent, the sharpest increase since World War II.

In spite of Americans economic concerns, we had not forgotten the lessons of Silent Spring. The Environmental Protection Agency was created in the 1970s, and a wave of environmental laws began with passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970 and the Clean Water Act in 1972.

The feminist movement continued in the 1970s with the Supreme Courts 7-2 decision protecting a womans right to an abortion. In Roe v. Wade the court struck down state laws against abortion, citing rights to privacy and due process.

After 10 long years, troops started coming home from Vietnam. The first contingent of 400 Green Beret special advisors were sent to Vietnam in May 1961. It was April 30, 1971, when the last Marine combat unit evacuated and came home. Unfortunately, the homecoming and return to the job market was not always a smooth process. Some of Americans distaste for the war carried over to returning veterans, who found themselves discriminated against in the employment process. The result was the passage of the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act in 1974, prohibiting discrimination against Vietnam-era veterans by the federal government and by government contractors.

The nation celebrated its 200th birthday, and times were changing. In the same year, Apple introduced the first consumer computer, the Apple I. It was replaced a year later with the Apple II, and by the 1980s, the Apple III was routinely found in elementary schools across the country.

HR was changing in the 1970s as well. There were more classes of employees protected from discrimination, and the Griggs court decision generated increased scrutiny of selection procedures to ensure against disparate impact. Recognizing the professional nature of HR management, the ASPA Accreditation Institute, an offshoot of ASPA (now SHRM), administered the first HR certification exams in 1978 and certified 2,100 professionals the first year.

*Union membership declined steadily in the 1960s and 1970s, likely the result of changing workforce demographics and passage of employment legislation that gave employment protection to workers without the need for union membership. In August 1981, nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers went on strike after a breakdown in negotiations with the federal government. Forty-eight hours later, President Reagan fired 11,350 strikers who ignored orders to return to work. The era of unions power had ended.

The 1980s saw the greatest banking collapse since the Great Depression, with failure of more than half of the nations savings and loan institutions. Stock prices slid and insecurity compounded after Black Monday--October 19, 1987--when the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 22 percent. Economic troubles hit hard in the American workplace. Organizations ordered mass layoffs to reduce costs, inflation soared, property values fell, and American workers struggled to adapt. Congress responded by passing legislation protecting laid-off workers. The first, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), enabled unemployed workers to continue their company-sponsored health insurance for up to 18 months at the employees expense. The second was the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), intended to prevent layoffs without notice. Employers covered under WARN are required to provide 60 days notice to employees in the event of a mass layoff or plant closure.

*Economic issues were not the whole of the 1980s. The ADEA was amended again, this time eliminating the age ceiling for discrimination protection. With some exceptions, employers could no longer require mandatory retirement, provided the worker could still meet the minimum job requirements.

Though the concept of sexual harassment had been identified in the courts for 10 years, until 1986, the courts had recognized only quid pro quo harassment as actionable. Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson was the first sexual harassment case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. In its decision, the court affirmed that sexual harassment violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act regardless of whether it was quid pro quo harassment or hostile environment. Court decisions further defining sexual harassment continue to the present time.

The United States has always been a nation of immigrants, and this remains true today. However, the pattern of immigration has not remained static over time. Immigration peaked in the early part of the last century--the Ellis Island years between 1902 and 1914 when 12.4 million immigrants entered the country, mostly from Europe. Today, the majority of our immigrant population comes from Mexico, Latin America and Asia. Many are undocumented and in the U.S. illegally, so exact numbers are impossible to obtain. Some believe that undocumented immigrants account for up to 30 percent of the population growth in California. Prior to passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, there were few restrictions placed on employers who hired illegal immigrants. Consequently, many seeking illegal entry into the United States to find a job had little problem finding one. The law now requires proof of the right to work in the United States as a condition of hiring. If the employee is hired without the proper documentation, it is not the employee who is punished but the employer who receives sanctions.

The Employee Polygraph Protection Act severely limited the use of polygraph testing in private employment. With some exceptions, it cannot be used as a selection device and its use in detecting employee theft is restricted.

As the decade changds, so too did HR. The use of the term personnel administration to identify the profession was used less frequently; more often, the profession was being called human resource management or simply shortened to HR. In light of the terminology change, the largest national professional organization changed its name to become the Society for Human Resource Management, or simply SHRM, as we know it today.

Not only did the name change, but the profession itself changed. This became the decade of individual rights as increasing employment protection was gained through litigation. Numerous court cases eroded the employers right to terminate at will, requiring HR departments to increase documentation of disciplinary actions and to increase training for supervisory managers.

AIDS, previously unknown, reared its ugly head in the 1980s and marched right into the workplace. In 1981, the Centers for Disease Control reported that five young men had died from a mysterious, newly discovered disease. One year later, the new disease was linked to blood and called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS. There was little known about the disease. Many feared it was easily transmitted, and consequently, infected employees were shunned in the workplace or, worse yet, fired. By 1980, 31 Americans had died from AIDS, with the total increasing yearly to nearly 40,000 deaths by the end of the decade. Education about and understanding of the disease revealed it was not so easily transmitted, and AIDS victims suffered less discrimination, but it was not until 1988 that legal protection was granted when federal law banned discrimination against federal employees with AIDS. There is now much more knowledge about AIDS than there was in the 1980s and far less fear, but the disease continues to take its deadly toll, with six and a half million deaths worldwide and 22 million people infected by 1997.

*As organizations downsized in the 1980s, many workers--particularly older employees--felt pressured to take early retirement and leave their jobs. Intending to protect older workers from undue pressure in a slowing economy, Congress passed the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act as an amendment to the ADEA. The act permits early retirement incentive plans as long as they are voluntary and requires employers to offer benefits to older workers that are equal to or greater than benefits given to younger workers.

In 1990, another employee class was protected from discrimination with the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Stereotypes and discrimination against the disabled had a long history of keeping otherwise qualified disabled Americans out of the workplace, because employers wrongly assumed that the disabled could not do the work or that managing a disability in the workplace was just too much trouble. This bill was strongly opposed by employers, partly due to the ambiguity of the legislation. The law required employers to provide reasonable accommodation in providing equal opportunity to an otherwise qualified disabled individual. Employers had no idea what was meant by a reasonable accommodation, and there was fear that required accommodations would be too expensive and debilitating for organizations. The other concern was the broad definition of disability. Some claimed that under the laws definition of disability, every worker in the country was disabled. Fortunately, employers fears proved unfounded in the history of this legislation. A 2006 survey from the Job Accommodation Network reported that more than half of the accommodations provided by employers cost nothing and of those that did, the average cost was about $500. Besides discrimination protection in employment, the ADA required disabled access to public places and resulted in new standards for construction and remodeling of public buildings.

Another significant law that came out of the 1990s was the Family and Medical Leave Act passed in 1993. This law allows many employees to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in any 12-month period if they have a serious health issue of their own, or if they need time to care for a new baby, adopted child or an ill family member. Obviously, a major drawback to employee use of this law is that the leave is unpaid, and many simply cannot afford to take time off without compensation. This law has consistently been problematic for HR managers; defining a qualifying event is not always clear, and because employees can take FMLA leave incrementally, tracking time off can be difficult.

Civil rights had not been forgotten in the 1990s; employee litigation continued to rise. A major revision to the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed by Congress in 1991, allowing litigants to recover punitive damages from employers who engaged in discriminatory practices with malice or with reckless indifference to the law. Allowable damages are based on the size of the organization, with larger organizations subject to higher costs.

Early in the decade, American military reserves were called out of the workplace and sent to the Gulf War. This was the first time Americans had gone to war with an all-volunteer army. Typically, these were not career soldiers, but ordinary working Americans who wanted their jobs back when their deployment ended. The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, USERRA, entitled military personnel to return to their civilian employment after completion of military service. The act was intended to eliminate or minimize employment disadvantages to civilian careers that can result from time in military service and away from employment.

Illegal immigration continued to be a hot topic in the 1990s and on into the new century. As an outcome of the fear resulting from the first bombing of the World Trade Center, Congress passed the Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. The law placed severe limitations on individuals who come to the United States legally but remained longer than permitted by their visas and also on persons who violated their nonimmigrant status. *Employment lawsuits continued through the decade, with courts carving out more protection for employees. When Clarence Thomas was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by the first President Bush, he was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, a law professor and former colleague of Thomass at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The televised Senate hearings led to a media frenzy that brought workplace sexual harassment to the forefront of public debate. It was no longer a quiet issue confined behind closed doors; it was now the top water-cooler conversation. Employees across the country came forward with claims of harassment, followed by a groundswell of litigation. HR departments found themselves grappling with harassment claims and investigations. Sexual harassment claims filed with the EEOC rose from 6,883 in 1991 to 13,136 in 2004. Employers scrambled to write policies, establish reporting and investigating procedures, and conduct employee training.

The first Gulf War came to an end in March 1991 when Iraq accepted conditions for a permanent cease-fire. But long-term peace in the region was not to be. By the end of the decade, Iraq was no longer cooperating with U.N. weapons inspections, and at the start of the new millennium, newly elected President George W. Bush instructed the Pentagon to develop plans for a possible war in Iraq.

1995 marked the beginning of explosive growth of Internet users. Their increased use spawned numerous Internet start-up companies, all intending to profit from the growth of online customers. These companies were referred to as dot-coms after the .com in their web addresses. Their growth generated a surge in stock prices, because investors wanted to get in on the ground floor of what was anticipated to be a profitable new industry. The stock market rose dramatically, with hundreds of companies being founded weekly, creating a dot-com bubble. Unfortunately for many companies and numerous investors, the growth of the tech industry proved to be illusory. The industry was riddled with unscrupulous business practices, and stock prices began to slide as tech companies folded. Many investors lost substantial sums of money when the dot-com bubble burst, and recession followed as the country moved into the new century.

Sources:

An Outline of the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas Controversy. Retrieved October 2, 2008, from http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/hill/hillframe.htm.

Salvatore, P., Weitzman, A., & Halem, D. (2005). How the law changed HR. HR Magazine, 13, 50, 47-56.

Key Dates: The First Gulf War. Retrieved October 6, 2008, from www.warchronicle.com/iraq/news/timeline_two_wars.htm.

Smith, S.E. (2003). What was the dot-com bubble? Retrieved October 6, 2008, from www.wisegeek.com/what-was-the-dot-com-bubble.htm.*The use of technology continues to change how work is accomplished. Many low-skilled manufacturing jobs of the past have been replaced with automated processes. Contemporary business relies on knowledge workers and computer resources. As technology changes the way work gets done, it also enables intrusion into employee privacy with workplace surveillance, keystroke monitoring and smart ID cards that can track employee movement.

Workplace violence and the terrorist bombings of 9/11 made us all realize the importance of security. The open facility where visitors could come and go unrestricted has become a thing of the past. Workplaces are now characterized by controlled entry, employee ID badges, pass codes and locked doors.

Immigration continues, legal and illegal. Increased border patrols, more fences and added requirements have done little to staunch the flow of illegal aliens. Most are here looking for work, but they bring with them issues of invalid documentation, language barriers and sometimes diversity clashes. Legislation and court decisions have increased the burden on HR to ensure that new hires have proper documentation. This, too, is changing through technology; employers can now use the online E-Verify system to electronically verify the citizen status of newly hired employees.

As the economy slows in the new century, businesses across industries tighten their belts. Mergers and acquisitions, employee downsizing and offshoring all increase employee insecurity as unemployment numbers grow and health care costs rise. At the same time, new opportunities open for younger workers as employers prepare for the impending retirement of the Baby Boomers.

*A summary of HR evolution.

The history of labor traces the evolution of HR management and HR as a profession. There was little HR management in early labor. When work was done by slaves, indentured servants and the impoverished lower classes, workers had little or no human rights. There was little concern for workers and no defined employment rights.

As businesses moved from the farm and home to industry, managers were needed to oversee the factors of production, including labor. The emphasis was on producing profits for the owner, and there was little concern for the human element beyond efforts to increase productivity.

As workers won the right to unionize, the industrial relations professional position was created to manage the negotiation process and administer union contracts.

With the advent of World War II, we see the beginning of modern HR management. Industry moved into full production to produce military supplies, and women entered the workforce to replace men who marched off to war. They faced many of the same issues we see from single parents in todays workplace: the need for daycare, flexible scheduling and family benefits. When the war ended, industry moved from military to civilian production and military personnel returned to the workplace. Work was forever changed. There was now a human element to be managed, and it was the province of the personnel administrator.

Compliance became a big issue, starting with civil rights legislation in the 1960s and continuing from there as the courts eroded the employment-at-will doctrine and legislation continued to ensure employee rights. The personnel administrator maintained documentation, monitored employee demographics, took head counts and filed required forms, all the while working with managers to ensure there were no missteps. Some said they felt like the HR police; the feeling certainly had some validity.

As responsibilities grew and the profession changed, the personnel administrator evolved into todays contemporary HR manager. The name was not the only change. We see our new HR manager moving up on the organization chart. HR is no longer relegated to a little box to the side and near the bottom of the chart. With HRs increasing responsibilities, we see the profession moving to a top-level position, reporting to the chief executive officer and playing a strategic role in the organizations success.

*Numerous issues--social, political and economic--have significantly affected the way business in general and HR in particular is done.

Technology has made many of our jobs easier. HRIS, applicant tracking and enterprise resource planning systems have eliminated many of HRs mundane tasks. Technology requires continuous updating and retraining of employees. It gives us the opportunity to work off-site and accomplish tasks 24/7. This flexibility is welcomed by many, but at the same time, 24/7 work access challenges the way we manage staff and compensate employees. Ensuring employee privacy and data security, always a concern for HR, becomes increasingly challenged as technology evolves.

Important as it is to secure organizational data, employee security is the first priority. Workplace violence and the tragedy of 9/11 reminds us all that unexpected, horrific events can devastate an organization. It means planning for the worst and training employees how to respond in the event of a tragedy. All employees must be trained to recognize the signs of impending violence, and supervisors and managers must be trained in proper and respectful methods of supervision, thereby defusing potential hostile employees.

Globalization expands the labor pool and generates low-cost consumer goods we all enjoy. Globalization creates staffing challenges at offshore facilities and management challenges with downsizing, layoffs and mergers here at home.

Organizations worry about a potential leadership shortage and the loss of knowledge as we prepare for Baby Boomers to retire within the next decade. HR must create systems for knowledge transfer and anticipate the labor shortage. It will require creative recruitment, succession planning and leadership training to be ready for a future without this large segment of the labor force.

Overall, employment regulation will continue, from revised I-9 forms to new interpretations of the ADA and FMLA. HR must maintain appropriate compliance and ensure that staff is trained to meet regulatory requirements. Besides laws, regulations and court decisions, organizations are rightfully concerned about the rise in class-action employment lawsuits. As the organizations first line of defense, it is up to HR to ensure compliance with regulations, that appropriate policies are written and administered equitably and that managers are well-trained.

*References:

Gardner, H. (2006). Changing Minds The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other Peoples Minds. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 39.

Salvatore, P., Weitzman, A., & Halem, D. (2005). How the law changed HR. HR Magazine, 13, 50, 47-56.

*Students can discuss these questions in small groups followed by whole class discussion, depending on time. If preferred, these could also be part of a written assignment.

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