Jack Stieber, director of Michigan State University's School of Labor and Industrial Relations from 1959 to 1985, who built it to become one of the most respected such centers in the country, and a long-time member of the National Academy of Arbitrators, died on March 22, 2011at Sparrow Hospice due to complications of a stroke. He was 91 years old.
Stieber emigrated with his family from Hungary at the age of four, settling in Newark, New Jersey. After earning his bachelor's degree from the City College of New York, he served as a captain in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. He went on to receive his master's degree from the University of Minnesota and his PhD in economics from Harvard University, where he was both a Littauer and a Wertheim Fellow.
Before being hired by MSU in 1956 to head LIR's Research and Planning Division, Stieber worked for the National Housing Agency, the Steelworkers Union, and the Wage Stabilization Board. He served as executive secretary to President John F. Kennedy's Advisory Committee on Labor-Management Policy in 1962; as a research consultant for the International Institute for Labour Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1963 to 1964; and as an Overseas Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge University, in 1978. He taught and lectured in Great Britain, Belgium, Japan, India, Iran, Israel, New Zealand, and Australia. In 1983, he served as president of the Industrial Relations Research Association (now the Labor and Employment Relations Association), which honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. He received the Distinguished Faculty Award from MSU in 1974. Stieber wrote or edited eleven books and many articles in professional journals, focusing on industrial relations in steel, automotive manufacturing, and other industries. He had a particular interest in protecting unorganized workers from unjust-discharge actions.
He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Carolyn; two cherished daughters, Allison, of Somerville, Massachusetts, and Joan, of Washington, DC; and many loving nieces and nephews. He was a willed body donor to MSU's Anatomy Department.
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