Pioneering Young State-Supported Industrial and Labor Relations School Has Labor, Management Confidence

Every Wednesday during the school year a group of Cornell freshmen pile aboard specially chartered buses and ride off to nearby glass factories or coal mines.

These travelers are not budding coal miners or glass blowers--even though Cornell has often been associated with the "practical" side of education. Nor is their trip just a weekly pleasure jaunt at Cornell's expense.

The freshmen are students in New York State's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, the first and only one of its kind in the country. Their weekly trip is actually part of a required course in Industrial Occupations and Processes, a title which both students and faculty members have understandably shortened to "Busriding."

Conceived in the New York State legislature in the early 1940's and passed largely through the efforts of then state representative Irving Ives, who became its first dean, the School of Industries and Labor Relations has pioneered in the complex and often controversial area of management and labor studies.

Legislation which established the School recognized the increasing importance of this field and set an imposing task for the ILR. The law reads in part: "It is necessary that understanding of industrial and labor relations be advanced; that more effective cooperation among employers and employees . . . be achieved, that means for encouraging the growth of mutual respect and greater responsibility on the part of both employers and employees be developed; and that industrial efficiency through the analysis of problems relating to employment be improved . . ."

Charges of Blas

When the ILR School opened its doors in the fall of 1945, it found that fulfillment of its major objectives was not an easy assignment. By its very nature, the School is largely dependent on the active co-operation of industrial and labor groups. Without such groups' participation, even its teaching dunctions would be greatly handicapped, if not made impossible.

But in the School's early years, such cooperation was not always forthcoming. For many businessmen tended to regard any investigation of industrial and labor relations as automatically biased in favor of labor and very probably "leftist" in inspiration and aims. And many labor leaders viewed any researches conducted under the auspices of a university as automatically slanted in favor of management, even though the School is not one of the privately endowed colleges of Cornell.

Perhaps these charges of bias coming from both sides were the surest signs of the School's real objectivity. But that was small consolation for a school in an experimental stage when it needed assistance. Fortunately, however this problem never reached the critical stage.

In recent years, similar suspicions have generally disappeared. As Dean Martin P. Catherwood admits, there is still some distrust of the School in various quarters in both business and labor. But this distrust is now limited to individuals and does not extend to whole industries or unions. The passage of time and the School's evident effort to do the job fairly and well have dispelled most delusions.

In fact, as the School enters its tenth year of teaching, it now seems to have negotiated successfully the experimental period and to be setting down into an established pattern. The size of the student body seems relatively stable at about 300 undergraduates and 70 graduate students; it may again increase when projected new buildings to replace the present Quonset-hut-like structures are erected.

Young Faculty

ILR is also beginning to obtain its faculty from among its own graduates. Most of its students go into business, labor, or government, but some Ph.D. students now are remaining at Ithaca to join the staff. As might be expected, this faculty is among the youngest in the University in average age.

In accordance with suggestions made in the establishing legislation, the School's program is divided into three main parts, each receiving approximately equal emphasis.

The teaching program contains numerous courses in particular specialized areas of industrial and labor relations. Real specialization does not begin until the junior year and the School encourages its undergraduates to take as many courses as possible in other departments of the University.

One of the undergraduate division's requirements for graduation is that students work off-campus for at least thirty weeks during their college careers. A student may work one summer with a business group, the next with a labor organization, and perhaps the third with a governmental agency, earning course credit for his work. Practical experience in the pre-college years is also a definite factor in the School's admissions decisions.

Large Research Program

A second important aspect of the School's work is its extension service in New York. Regional representatives in Albany. Buffalo, New York City, and Ithaca help to plan conferences and courses with interested groups.

The School also makes major provision for its research and study program. The special library contains over 20,000 volumes and periodicals and the School issues a quarterly journal.

School faculty members on occasion venture out of their Quonset hut offices to participate in fact-finding boards and investigating committees in specific labor controversies. One faculty member helped to advise a Congressional committee studying possible revisions in the Taft-Hartley Law. Dean Catherwood himself has served on groups investigating the New York waterfront situation and the recent dispute between the railroads and their non-operating employees.

Thus, the School is one of the least cloistered of Cornell's divisions. Its students may not actually dig in the coalmines they visit and they do not declare dividends for the companies they study. But they seem to learn almost everything else about that complicated organism, the American economy.