For over sixty years, members of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA), formerly IRRA, have been at the forefront of public policy and workplace innovations designed to improve the employment relationship. One of our key purposes is to promote the “full discussion and the exchange of ideas between and among all constituencies—academic, labor, management, neutral, and the public.” To do so, “The Association will assume no partisan position on questions of policy in these fields, nor will it commit its members to any position on such questions.”In the past, we have provided this unique “think-tank” forum of open expression with our meetings, publications, and local chapter activities. Today, we are pleased to continue that mission with the LERAblog, an online medium that allows us to better reach and include an ever-broadening community.

To foster an environment that promotes productive online discussion and exchange, we must work together to comport ourselves ethically and respectfully. By using or contributing to any blogs hosted at http://lerablog.org, you agree to do so, and further agree to the conditions of our Blogging Policy and Code of Ethics. Please read it carefully before contributing to our online discussion.

1. The LERA Constitution, No. 2, paragraph e, states “The Association will assume no partisan position on questions of policy in these fields, nor will it commit its members to any position on such questions . . .” In accordance with this, the views and opinions expressed in individuals blogs hosted on this site are the author’s alone and do not represent the views or positions of the Association.
2. Statements for or against political candidates are prohibited, and confidential or proprietary information should not be posted.
3. If you have questions about what is appropriate to include in your blog, please ask prior to posting.
4. Be respectful to the Association, our employees, our members, our partners, and our blaudience.
5. Content and postings will be considered original and common information, unless otherwise specified, to be reproduced and distributed by others, and will be available for RSS aggregation.
6. Do not submit copyrighted information unless you have the specific permission to do so. In that case, be sure to label the information with a copyright notice, such as the word “Copyright” or the symbol “©”, the year of first publication, name of the copyright holder, and the phrase “used with permission”.
7. The LERA believes in protecting intellectual property. If you believe that your work has been incorrectly displayed, cited, or used in our site, please let us know.
8. By posting on http://lerablog.org, you grant LERA the non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual right to use your content on this blog.
9. Free speech is upheld as our standard; however, given our role we must reserve the right to remove postings. LERA individual blauthors will review comments to ensure compliance with blog policies. While the Association will not pre-screen or regularly review postings, it may remove content at its sole discretion that it considers illegal, obscene, defamatory, threatening, infringing in intellectual property rights, invasive of privacy, or otherwise injurious or questionable.
10. The LERA provides this site on an “as is” and “as available” basis and we reserve the right to modify our blogging policy at any time.

Blauthor Code of Ethics

1. I will tell the truth.I will write deliberately and with accuracy.I will acknowledge and correct mistakes promptly.
2. I will preserve the original post, using notations to show where I have made changes so as to maintain the integrity of my publishing.
3. I will not delete comments unless they are spam, off-topic, illegal, obscene, defamatory, threatening, infringing in intellectual property rights, invasive of privacy, or otherwise injurious or questionable.I will reply to emails and comments when appropriate, and do so promptly.
4. I will properly cite the words and ideas of others, avoid any form of plagiarism, and respect all copyright laws.
5. I will strive for high quality with every post – including basic spell-checking.
6. I will stay on topic.I will disagree with other opinions respectfully.
7. I will link to online references and original source materials directly.
8. I will disclose conflicts of interest.
9. I will keep private issues and topics private, since discussing private issues would jeopardize my personal and work relationships.
10. I will not use the LERA name to promote a product or political candidate.
11. I understand that my content and postings are my own and that “The Association will assume no partisan position on questions of policy in these fields, nor will it commit its members to any position on such questions.”