ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the scant received history that addresses employee relations. It explores the early development of personnel policies within the context of gender, race, and class, demonstrating how employee relations developed from within multiple disciplines, public relations (PR) among them, to address social norms and concerns. The women’s departments of the Progressive Era demonstrated a growing institutionalization of the employee relations function, but they were closely related to a nascent form of industrial relations and operated separately from most publicity and PR functions. The personal values and beliefs of corporate owners shaped how industrial relations programs were instigated and administered, and no clear professional boundaries were in place that defined this work as the purview of PR only. The Depression marked the cessation of most corporate welfare programs, and President Franklin Roosevelt introduced legislation to address resulting labor and social welfare issues.
