John Thomas Dunlop

John Thomas Dunlop (July 5, 1914 – October 2, 2003) was a U.S. administrator and labor scholar.

He was the Secretary of Labor between 1975 and 1976. He was also Director of the U.S. Cost of Living Council from 1973–1974, Chairman of the U.S.Commission on the Future of Worker/Management Relations from 1993–1995 and arbitrator and impartial chairman of various U.S. labor-management committees, member of numerous government boards on industrial relations disputes and economic stabilization programs.

A labor economist, he received his Ph.D. from the University of California (Berkeley) in 1939. He taught at Harvard University from 1938 until his retirement as Lamont University Professor in 1984. While at Harvard, he was Chairman of the Economics Department from 1961–1966 and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1969-1973.

He came to be recognized in the postwar United States as the most influential figure in the field of Industrial Relations. Though primarily a labor economist and later an academic dean at Harvard University, Dunlop carried out advisory roles in every U.S. Presidential Administration from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to William Jefferson Clinton. He mediated and arbitrated disputes in a wide variety of industries and over a range of issues in the formative post-World War II period. He also influenced the study of industrial and labor relations with his framework of an “industrial relations system” that arose from his scholarly as well as applied work. In looking back at his own legacy, Dunlop regarded himself fundamentally as a problem solver with an abiding interest in the workplace.

Among the numerous books he wrote are Industrial Relations Systems (1958, 1993); Industrialism and Industrial Man (1960, joint author); Labor and the American Community (1970, with Derek C. Bok); Dispute Resolution, Negotiation and Consensus Building (1984); and The Management of Labor Unions (1990).