Former industry executive designs new labor relations course, preparing students for HR workforce.

During his 32-year management career at International Paper, Rusty Adair recruited at Auburn and other universities across the south, where he noticed a gap in students’ knowledge related to labor relations. When he retired in 2022 and became a professor of practice at the Harbert College of Business, he set out to fill that gap through an enhanced human resource management course.

In the past, Adair said, schools in the South typically didn’t offer many courses that addressed union workforce relations because fewer companies had unions compared to other parts of the country. Union membership rates across the south, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, run well below the national 10% average.

However, some major employers like Delta Air Lines, Alabama Power and International Paper do have union workers, so Adair revamped the labor relations course (HRMN 4430) to broaden students’ HR knowledge.

“The skills our students learn in the course are valuable whether they end up working at a company that has a union or not,” said Adair, who based the course on a weeklong boot camp he created at International Paper for young HR professionals with a lack of experience interacting with organized labor.

Learn by doing

More hands-on workshop than a traditional lecture, the course addresses the entire lifecycle of labor relations—including contract negotiation, employee grievance investigation and presenting a case for arbitration, among other topics.

At the start of the semester, Adair assigned the 45 students into two groups—one group took the union perspective and the other group took the company management perspective on each aspect of labor relations for the duration of the course.

“I want the students to see that tensions do exist and that there are differences in perspective,” said Adair.

Recent alumna Claire Allen said one of the most valuable aspects of the class was working on a real disciplinary case that Adair had overseen during his career.

According to Allen, the case involved a disagreement between employees that escalated into a fight and the termination of one of the employees. This triggered the fired employee to file a grievance for wrongful termination.

After examining the facts of the case, both student groups wrote opening statements for the arbitration. Adair played the role of the arbitrator.

“[My group] read witness statements and then built an opening statement as if we were representing the union at arbitration,” said Allen, who graduated in May 2024 and is working as an HR associate at a Huntsville-based defense contractor. “Another student, who was taking the company perspective, and I read [our group’s] opening statements. It was cool to get experience on a case that [I might experience].”

Later in the semester, Adair’s former International Paper colleague Jennifer Webber, who actually arbitrated the grievance case, spoke to the class and walked them through how the case was resolved, Adair said.

One of the most valuable aspects of the course for Gigi Casadaban was learning about HR’s role in a unionizing campaign process and the legal issues associated with a union vote.

“There are very specific things the company can and cannot do,” said Casadaban, who graduated in May 2024 and is enrolled in a master’s degree program at Auburn. “It makes it kind of scary if you didn’t know this. It was interesting to walk through all of this.”

Casadaban said she also appreciated hearing from so many guest speakers, who discussed real-world labor issues drawn from their own careers, including Dave Trostle, a director with the United Steelworkers union, and the arbitrator from International Paper.

“I’d never met someone who works for a union before, so that was cool to hear his perspective on why he thinks unions are needed in a corporation,” Casadaban said.  “This class adds so much value to the management major and the HR curriculum minor.”

Allen agreed about the overall value of the course.

“As an HR professional you have your employees’ interests at heart, but you also have to [represent] the company’s interests,” Allen said. “The class gave us these training wheels to practice what it would be like if we worked for the union or the company side of an issue.”  

Adair is planning to offer the course again in the Spring 2025 semester.

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