The UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment supports faculty and graduate student research on employment and labor topics in a variety of academic disciplines. The Institute also sponsors colloquia, conferences and other public programming, is home to the undergraduate minor in Labor and Workplace Studies at UCLA, and carries out educational outreach on workplace issues to constituencies outside the university. The Institute, in addition to the Academic Unit, includes three affiliate organizations: the UCLA Labor Center, the Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program, and the Human Resources Round Table.

News & Announcements

 

Videos of UCLA IRLE colloquia now available online

The IRLE is very pleased to announce that we are now making video of many of our Colloquia available via a YouTube channel. You can find the link to video, plus some sound files and PowerPoint presentations here.

 

IRLE Welcomes Visting Scholars from Korea, France, Berkeley
	IRLE is pleased to welcome three Visiting Scholars for sojourns of varying lengths. Read more...

2010 Community Scholars Program Begins

The Community Scholars Program is a joint initiative of UCLA's Department of Urban Planning and the Center for Labor Research and Education that offers opportunity for community and labor leaders, regardless of their educational background, to participate in a special applied research project seminar along with graduate students for two academic quarters. The 2010 program entitled, Popular Education 2.0: Explaining Green Jobs to The People, involves the participa-tion of graduate students from urban planning, Latin American studies, and law; artists and cultural workers from the community; and staff of the UCLA Downtown Labor Center and the Labor Occupational Safety and Health.

 

IRLE Publishes its Fourth Research & Policy Brief – California Crisis: A Portrait of Unemployed Workers

With nearly 8 million jobs lost since December 2007 and a national unemployment rate of 10%, the Great Recession is worse than any other economic downturn since the Great Depression. At 12.3%, California’s unemployment rate is among the worst in the nation. Equally troubling is that unemployment affects some groups disproportionately. IRLE’s latest Research and Policy Brief looks at the situation in California as compared to the nation as a whole and examines the differential impact of the recession on various groups of workers. The importance of more stimulus and job creation for strong, sustainable growth is discussed.

 

New report: "Confronting the Gloves-Off Economy: America's Broken Labor Standards and How to Fix Them"

Across the United States, growing numbers of employers are breaking, bending, or evading long-established laws and standards designed to protect workers, from the minimum wage to job safety rules to the right to organize. A new report by IRLE brings together research on the “gloves-off economy” and what to do about it.