Applying Research to Public Policy: 1960-1975

The expansion of Southern California’s industrial economy in the mid-twentieth century created thousands of good, union jobs in the region, but not everyone shared equally in the prosperity. Black, Latine, Asian and women workers continued to experience workplace segregation, although many forms of discrimination became illegal in these years. And while industrial relations experts at the Institute championed the still-new system of collective bargaining, not all employers were eager to embrace unions. Access to college expanded rapidly, while UCLA’s enrollment and course offerings grew and diversified. True to its original purpose, the Institute’s research in these years informed public policy and grappled with complex new challenges.

The emergence of the Civil Rights Movement and widespread activism in the 1960s ushered in an era of social change and increased awareness of pervasive inequality and discrimination, including at work. Researchers at the IIR developed a robust program of community-engaged research, interviewing but also collaborating with working people, especially young people of color in South Central and Eastside neighborhoods wracked by segregation, high unemployment and under-funded schools. Labor economist Paul Bullock typified this line of inquiry with the people of Watts and Northeast LA, not as research subjects, but as collaborators in pioneering studies of black market labor and advocacy for full employment policies. Along with economist Robert Singleton, then a graduate student and NAACP activist, Bullock published a comprehensive study of unemployment on the eve of the Watts Uprising, Hard-Core Unemployment and Poverty in Los Angeles. Bullock and his collaborators later published a study of young workers in Watts and East Los Angeles, and in 1973 he organized a national conference to set forth a Full Employment agenda.

In 1964, the Center for Labor Research and Education, now the UCLA Labor Center, was established by a statewide joint labor-university committee. Authors of the new center’s guidelines highlighted key issues of the day deserving of labor-university collaboration: job displacement, the needs of white-collar unions, reducing hours of work and the problems of the unemployed. The Watts Uprising the following year would further galvanize a research agenda focused on the conditions and concerns of those left behind by postwar economic growth.

The IIR’s director in these years was Benjamin Aaron, a legal scholar and arbitrator who served on many national, state and local policy advisory boards. Aaron became interested in labor issues during his college years at the University of Michigan while the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) swept through industries in nearby Detroit. As he noted in his memoir, “my sympathies were strongly for organized labor.” His first job after graduating from Harvard University’s law school was with the War Labor Board, mediating industrial conflicts in the auto industry. He later served on the Wage Stabilization Board during the 1950s and a national commission on automation during the 1960s. Aaron advised California Governor Pat Brown, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and the state legislature on public employee labor relations, contributing to the current legal framework for public sector workers in the state.

1960
IIR confronting discrimination on the job
Illustration from the IRLE report, “Merit Employment,” 1960 / IRLE Archives

The fight against pervasive job discrimination united unions, civil rights organizations and religious groups on behalf of “fair employment” laws during the mid-twentieth century. After years of lobbying and campaigning, California established the Fair Employment Relations Commission in 1959. The following year, IIR researchers evaluated the new fair employment commission and underlined that “all phases of discrimination are closely interrelated.” Discriminatory patterns of hiring and firing could not be disentangled from unequal access to education, residential segregation and prejudiced ideas of who “belonged” in what jobs. Therefore, they concluded, “the attack on discrimination must be launched on several fronts at the same time.”
1964
Center for Labor Research and Education Established
Gloria Busman, who had previously worked at AFL-CIO’s Los Angeles/Orange Counties Organizing Committee, was hired as the first staff member of the Labor Center, later serving as director. / IRLE Archives

In 1964, the Center for Labor Research and Education (today’s UCLA Labor Center) was established within the IIR by a statewide joint labor-university committee. The committee highlighted four key issues that warranted deeper labor-university collaboration: job displacement, fair work hours, the need for white-collar unions and the problems of the unemployed. Representatives of the CA Federation of Labor pushed the state legislature to increase the budgets for both the UC Berkeley and UCLA IIR by $55,000 as part of the agreement.

1964
1965
The Watts Rebellion and the emergence of community-engaged research
Illustration from the IRLE report, “Hardcore Unemployment and Poverty in Los Angeles,” 1965 / IRLE Archives

By the early 1960s, the uneven and deeply unequal distribution of postwar prosperity could no longer be ignored. Industrial managers began to shutter plants and automate more and more jobs, a process that hit workers of color the hardest, laying the basis for decades of chronic unemployment in urban centers across the country, including the Watts section of South Central Los Angeles, which exploded in rebellion in 1965. Through his research on “hardcore unemployment,” the IIR’s Paul Bullock developed close ties to the people of Watts, putting their voices and analysis at the center of conversations about the persistence of poverty amidst plenty.
1970
Manpower Research Center
IIR researcher and economist Paul Bullock speaking with workers, c. 1968 / UCLA Library Special Collections

In the late 1960s, the U.S. Department of Labor became increasingly concerned about “excessive workforce growth” that could result as a rising generation of baby boomers entered the workforce, better educated and more diverse than generations before them. The IIR received a large grant from the DOL to establish a “Manpower Research Center” to understand the challenges faced by specific sectors of this youthful workforce, particularly racial and ethnic minorities and women. The center was led by Paul Bullock, who pioneered community-engaged research methods still in practice today at the IRLE and expanded the IIR’s research agenda to include underemployed, non-union and historically marginalized sectors of the workforce.

1970
1972
The IIR and Title IX
Cover of the IRLE report, “Women & Work,” 1964 / IRLE Archives

With the 1972 passage of the Title IX amendment prohibiting discrimination “on the basis of sex,” women gained equal access to higher education. The number of female students at UCLA increased dramatically in the years that followed, as did the number of women at the IIR. Joining Gloria Busman, who worked at the Labor Center from its founding in 1964, Geraldine Leshin was hired at the IIR and taught the first undergraduate courses at UCLA on equal employment opportunity in 1979. Along with Gwen Hendrix, June McMahon, Marianne Brown and others, they pushed the IIR to increase its focus on women workers, marked by its 1986 conference on “Women at Work,” co-hosted by the newly established UCLA Women’s Studies Program.
1973
Full Employment for America
Congressman Augustus F. Hawkins, who introduced the “Equal Opportunity and Full Employment Act,” 1977 / UCLA Library Special Collections

In October 1973, the IIR’s Manpower Research Center hosted a symposium about proposals to establish a “right to a useful job” under federal law. Featured speakers included community leaders such as Vernon E. Jordan of the National Urban League, advocates and politicians, as well as academics. Congressman Augustus Hawkins, who opened the symposium, introduced the “Equal Opportunity and Full Employment Act” in its wake, demonstrating how the IIR’s work informed public policy to advance justice and equity for all.

1973
1975
Collective Bargaining Rights for Public Sector Workers
Cover of the report “Understanding Unions in the Public Sector,” 1977 / University of California, Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment Library

In the 1970s, long-time IIR Director Ben Aaron was invited to serve on the California Assembly Advisory Council on Public Employee Relations, tasked with drafting legislation recognizing the collective bargaining rights of public sector employees for the state of California. Aaron, who had helped to draft the LA County Employees Relations Ordinance, believed strongly that public employees were entitled to the same rights as private sector workers. The Advisory Council’s initial proposals were rejected, but following the election of Governor Jerry Brown, the legislature enacted them in short order, passing EERA (Education Employee Relations Act, 1975), SEERA (State Employer-Employee Relations Act, 1977) and HEERA (Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act, 1978), the latter empowering workers at the University of California to unionize.