Bridging Campus and Community: 1975-2000

The Los Angeles economy changed dramatically in the final quarter of the twentieth century. From 1975 to 1985, factory closures left more than 75,000 workers unemployed. Remaining industrial employers laid off thousands more and pushed unions to accept wage and benefit cuts. By IIR’s 40th Anniversary Conference in 1985, presided over by Institute director Daniel Mitchell, industrial relations scholars openly debated whether collective bargaining was still a viable model of workplace governance.

As the heyday of industry-wide collective bargaining passed, a wave of immigrants seeking economic opportunity reshaped the Los Angeles workforce. Many new arrivals found low-wage jobs in the growing service sector, where local employers deployed multilayered subcontracting arrangements to impede unionization. As workers and unions strategized new ways to organize an increasingly global city, the Institute was once again a strategic partner. IIR staff, led by Marianne Brown, partnered with the local and federal government to develop the Labor Occupational Safety and Health (LOSH) program, one of the first of its kind in the nation. The Institute also launched the Human Resources Roundtable (HARRT) in 1986, bringing together HR professionals for training and professional development.

In 1991, the UCLA Labor Center welcomed a new director, labor lawyer and community organizer Kent Wong, who would lead the center for the next three decades. As part of a cohort of activists mentored in nonviolent resistance and movement-building by the Reverend James Lawson Jr., Wong maintained close ties with unions at the forefront of organizing low-wage, immigrant and Black workers. Labor Center staff held Spanish-language training programs for workers on the Westwood campus, hosted a national Teach-In on the New Labor Movement and partnered with the AFL-CIO to train college students as union organizers in the “Union Summer” program.

New faculty perspectives also shaped the Institute’s programming. Faculty and researchers in the Department of Urban Planning, including Edward Soja, Jacqueline Leavitt, Gilda Haas and Goetz Wolff, expanded the community-engaged research approach, advancing new ways of thinking about race, space and who belongs in the city. The Community Scholars program created a model for collaborative research in which graduate students and community members studied a problem together and proposed concrete actions. The Community Scholars program helped launch organizations like the L.A. Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE), as well as the Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project (LAMAP), a multi-union organizing campaign.

1978
Labor Occupational Safety and Health program (LOSH) established
Cover of the Labor Occupational Health Program Monitor, Vol. 15, No. 3, Summer 1987 / University of California, Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment Library

The IIR formally established its Labor Occupational Safety and Health (LOSH) Program in 1978 after being awarded grant funding from the U.S. Department of Labor, the California Department of Health and the City of Los Angeles. Workplace safety had been part of the IIR’s educational program from its beginnings, and the Labor Center developed worksite training programs based on the new health and safety protections outlined in the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Although the Reagan administration subsequently withdrew funding for the program, LOSH endured with support from UCLA and the labor movement, hiring Marianne Brown as its first full-time director in 1985.
1981
Western International Conference on Economic Dislocation
United Auto Workers delegates with pickets reading “Stop Plant Closings UAW-I.P.S.”, Calif., 1977 / UCLA Library Special Collections

Following a series of major plant closures across the state of California, the IIR helped to organize a first-of-its-kind international gathering of over 500 activists from unions, religious groups and community organizations to discuss “economic dislocation.” The event led to the creation of a statewide group, CalCAPS (CA Coalition Against Plant Shutdowns), which linked to a national network of community organizations spearheading creative, worker-led responses to deindustrialization that helped shift the boundaries of labor movement strategy and tactics.

1981
1984
UCLA hosts Summer Olympics
Map of “Olympic Village” and event venue locations at UCLA for the 1984 Summer Olympics, 1984 / UCLA Library Special Collections

In 1984, UCLA expanded to become a main venue for the Summer Olympic Games. Among the new buildings constructed was the offices of the LAOOC, now known as the Ueberroth Building, today the home of the IRLE.
1986
IIR 40th anniversary – “The Future of Industrial Relations”

The audio above is a recording from the Institute of Industrial Relations’ 40th anniversary conference on Oct. 18, 1986. Reflecting on the IIR’s 40th Anniversary, then-director Daniel Mitchell recognized that an increasing amount of the institute’s work was focused on socio-economic issues—such as childcare, retirement, taxes, trade policy, healthcare and education—that fell outside the traditional paradigm of industrial relations. “The Future of Industrial Relations” became a major focus of the institute’s programming for the year, including its expanding research on collective bargaining in the public sector and a new program about human relations in “high tech.” It also became the focus of the anniversary conference, where veteran IIR faculty members and local labor leaders offered their thoughts on the future of the labor movement, higher education and the relationship between the two.

1986
1987
Labor’s Immigrant Assistance Project
Demonstrators protest against an early version of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, Los Angeles, c. 1983 / UCLA Library Special Collections

Following the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the AFL-CIO of Southern California established LIAP (Labor’s Immigrant Assistance Project) to help union and non-union immigrant workers obtain legal status and/or apply for citizenship under the legislation’s amnesty protections. Nationally, the AFL-CIO lobbied aggressively for the bill to pass, but in Southern California, unions contributed nearly $1 million to fund LIAP’s legalization efforts, including hiring dozens of caseworkers and establishing an extensive workers’ education program. In addition to helping some 10,000 people access work permits and legal status, LIAP gave rise to the CA Immigrant Workers Association (CIWA), which brought thousands of immigrant workers into the labor movement.
1988
Justice for Janitors and the emergence of a new labor movement
“Justice for Janitors” march in Downtown Los Angeles c. 1989 / UCLA Library Special Collections

While plant closures upended manufacturing workers’ unions, new opportunities for organizing emerged as the Los Angeles economy transitioned to finance and service work. The Justice for Janitors campaign, launched in 1988, was a nationwide campaign led by the Service Employees International Union to improve the wages and working conditions of custodial workers, a workforce overwhelmingly made up of immigrant workers of color. This bottom-up, worker-led campaign breathed new life into Los Angeles’s labor movement and supplied new directions for labor education and research at UCLA.

1988
1991
UCLA Labor Center in a new era of social movement organizing
UCLA Labor Center staff in 1992 – top row (right to left): June McMahon; Marianne Brown; Darryl Holter. Bottom row (right to left): Kent Wong; Brixti Abraha; Gwen Hendrix / IRLE Archives

Following the retirements of long-time leaders Gloria Busman and Geraldine Leshin, the IIR recruited Kent Wong to direct the Center for Labor Research and Education in 1991. An alum of the People’s College of Law, Wong had worked as a staff attorney for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center for Southern California and later SEIU Local 660, representing Los Angeles County workers. Under Wong’s leadership, the UCLA Labor Center seized on the energy from Los Angeles’ resurgent labor movement to advance the research agenda and educational mission of industrial relations into a new era marked by intensified public austerity and insecurity. Wong and UCLA Labor Center staff came away from the struggles of this “post-industrial” moment with a renewed emphasis on immigrant rights, nonviolent resistance and community organizing.
1991
Introducing collective bargaining to Los Angeles high school students
Students participate in a workshop at the Collective Bargaining Institute circa 1999 / IRLE Archives

The Collective Bargaining Education Project was first introduced to local high school students in 1991 under the direction of Los Angeles high school teacher and UTLA activist Linda Tubach and Patty Litwin. In collaboration with the UCLA Labor Center and sponsored by forty local labor organizations, the project conducted day-long collective bargaining simulations for high school students from ten different LAUSD schools at the UTLA headquarters. Over the next three decades, with the support of the UCLA Labor Center, tens of thousands of high school students would learn how workplace democracy works through participatory exercises.

1991
1994
Community scholars programs builds activist networks

This video, produced by the Tourism Industrial Development Council (TDIC) in 1994, illustrates the connections between place and inequality foregrounded by the convergence of urban planning and labor studies. First piloted by the Department of Urban Planning, the Community Scholars Program brought students and scholars together with local activists and community members to understand how space and place shape the lives and labors of working people. Led by Gilda Haas, the first project investigated Los Angeles’s tourism and hospitality industry, ultimately resulting in the creation of the TIDC. With a boost of funding from the UCLA Labor Center, subsequent cohorts launched the Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project (LA MAP), outlining just and equitable plans for revitalizing industrial development in the city.
1997
Teach-In on the New Labor Movement at UCLA
Then AFL-CIO president John Sweeney pictured with labor leader Dolores Huerta at the UCLA Labor Center’s “Teach-In on the New Labor Movement,” 1997 / IRLE Archives

The election of John Sweeney to the presidency of the AFL-CIO in 1995 marked a break with a long line of union leaders reluctant to confront the deep crisis of organized labor. Sweeney, who spearheaded the Justice for Janitors campaign as head of SEIU, sought to rebuild links between labor activists and labor educators. The Teach-In on the New Labor Movement held at UCLA and organized by Labor Center director Kent Wong in February 1997 brought together such luminaries as Dolores Huerta (pictured seated next to Sweeney), Linda Chavez-Thompson, the Reverend James Lawson Jr. and Miguel Contreras.

1997