Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

The Hand That Feeds
2015-10-28 12:30 - 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
At a popular bakery café, residents of New York’s Upper East Side get bagels and coffee served with a smile 24 hours a day. But behind the scenes, undocumented immigrant workers face sub-legal wages, dangerous machinery, and abusive managers who will fire them for calling in sick. Mild-mannered sandwich maker Mahoma López has never been interested in politics, but in January 2012, he convinces a small group of his co-workers to fight back.
Risking deportation and the loss of their livelihood, the workers team up with a diverse crew of innovative young organizers and take the unusual step of forming their own independent union, launching themselves on a journey that will test the limits of their resolve. In one roller-coaster year, they must overcome a shocking betrayal and a two-month lockout. Lawyers will battle in back rooms, Occupy Wall Street protesters will take over the restaurant, and a picket line will divide the neighborhood. If they can win a contract, it will set a historic precedent for low-wage workers across the country. But whatever happens, Mahoma and his coworkers will never be exploited again.

IRLE Dialogue Southern California Port Truck Drivers: Exploitation and Resistance
2015-05-27 13:00 - 14:30
Join three engaged legal experts and a historian to discuss this history-making worker struggle within the broader context of the push to improve low-wage jobs in the Los Angeles area!

After Marikana: The State, the ANC, and the Future of the Labor Movement in South Africa
2015-05-18 14:00 - 17:00
The colloquium will be devoted to the crises and conflicts that have wracked the labor movement in South Africa in recent years and the implications of these struggles for the future of South African politics. In 2012, police from the African National Congress (ANC) government gunned down 44 striking platinum workers in what has come to be known as the Marikana massacre, a watershed moment for South Africa’s politics and its trade unions.
The speakers will consider the historic strike by 70,000 Association of Mineworkers and Construction Workers (AMCU) that ensued, the internecine battles that have been taking place among the different sections of COSATU trade union federation, and the intense factional strife between the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and other sections of the trade union movement that has issued in NUMSA’s expulsion from COSATU.
NUMSA has now initiated a call for what it terms a united front, not only to build a new workers party to stand in national elections, but also to forge links between the struggles of productive and reproductive struggles that would better connect organized labor with the “service delivery protests” of poor, heavily immigrant workers. No less than the future of the South African workers movement and the nature the South African state are at stake.

Authors-Meet-Critics on Skills of the "Unskilled": Work and Mobility Among Mexican Migrants
2015-05-15 12:30 - 13:30
Most labor and migration studies classify migrants with limited formal education or credentials as “unskilled.” Despite the value of migrants’ work experiences and the substantial technical and interpersonal skills developed throughout their lives, the labor-market contributions of these migrants are often overlooked and their mobility pathways poorly understood. Skills of the “Unskilled” reports the findings of a five-year study that draws on research including interviews with 320 Mexican migrants and return migrants in North Carolina and Guanajuato, Mexico. The authors uncover these migrants’ lifelong human capital and identify mobility pathways associated with the acquisition and transfer of skills across the migratory circuit, including reskilling, occupational mobility, job jumping, and entrepreneurship.

New Strategies for Youth Employment: Rebuilding Community Jobs in the Face of Globalization
2015-05-14 12:30 - 14:00
Hard hit by economic restructuring have been young people of color, who face high under/unemployment rates resulting in conditions of increasing and persistent inequality, likely to affect generations to come. After assessing an array of policies that affect employment conditions among youth, Córdova will present neighborhood scale strategies that (re)build communities while increasing opportunities for youth (self)employment.

Organizing Latino Immigrants in the Informal Economy: The Successful Care of the Association of Latin American Gardeners of Los Angeles
2015-05-13 15:00 - 17:00
Panelists will discuss the successful organizing campaign of a small group of Latino gardeners in conjunction with a few Chicana/o activists against the City of Los Angeles’s draconian leaf blower ban, charging jardineros or gardeners with a misdemeanor, a $1,000 fine, and up to 6 months in jail. To read in advance on this historic grassroots movement of a disenfranchised ethnic niche, see Alvaro Huerta and Alfonso Morales’s essay “The Formation of a Grassroots Movement: The Association of Latin American Gardeners of Los Angeles Challenges City Hall” in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies (Fall 2014)

University of Richmond, Law Commencement 2015
2015-05-09 00:00
Commencement speech presented by Victor Narro, Project Director at the UCLA Downtown Labor Center

2015 IRLE Annual Conference
2015-04-17 07:30 - 2015-04-18 16:50
Join us as we present the UCLA Institute for Research and Employment’s 2015 conference on Labor, Entertainment, & Sports: An Intersectional and Interdisciplinary Inquiry. The conference will take place at Crowne Plaza Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, CA on Friday and Saturday, April 17-18, 2015.
The objective of the conference is to help build intellectual bridges between scholars taking critical and intersectional approaches to labor, organized labor, and industry professionals and practitioners. Panelists will discuss current labor and employment issues in the fields of sports and entertainment, and highlight the importance of racial/ethnic, gender/sexual orientation, and class/labor analyses of labor and employment issues in these industries. Panels will address gender, racial, and sexual orientation representation and equity; the labor of student athletes; global and transnational issues; unions, collective bargaining and labor disputes; health and safety issues; economic security and working conditions; innovative entrepreneurship; artist/athlete rights and representation; and current labor and employment issues in the industries.
The conference will culminate with an actors’ roundtable, featuring actors/filmmakers-workers discussing: the relationship between race/intersectional identity, labor, and the entertainment industry; the inclusion of diverse groups in the industry’s workforce, including lead roles, writing, directing, producing, and talent representation; worker/actor experiences in the workplace/labor market; the identification of best practices for increasing opportunities for underrepresented groups in industry’s workforce; and the broader implications of a diverse workforce in the industry.

Building China: The Rise of Informal Work and Spatial Politics
2015-02-25 12:30 - 14:00
Urbanization has been a cornerstone of China’s modernization project and an important driver of economic growth. As a result, over 50 percent of China’s billion people are now living in urban areas, concentrated in the 160 cities with a population over one million. Based on extensive ethnographic field research, this paper examines the lives and work of informal migrant construction workers as they are spatially, socially, and economically integrated into China’s cities. The study makes three main contributions concerning urban informal work in China. First, it documents the different forms of informal work and helps us make sense of the diversity of informal precarious work more generally. Second, it expands our understanding of China’s emerging labor regime that is central to labor control, intimately related to the urbanization process, and ultimately linked to China’s overall economic success. Finally, it shows how these migrants struggle against the disciplining process, contest exploitation and protest in unique ways.

Living and Laboring off the Grid: Black Women Prisoners and the Making of the “Modern” South, 1865-1920
2015-02-12 16:00 - 18:00
In this talk, LeFlouria will provide an in-depth examination of the lived and laboring experiences of imprisoned African-American women in the post-Civil War South, and describe how black female convict labor was used to help construct “New South” modernity. Using Georgia—the “industrial capital” of the region—as a case study, LeFlouria will analyze how African-American women’s presence within the convict lease and chain gang systems of the “empire state” helped modernize the “New South,” by creating a new and dynamic set of occupational burdens and competencies for black women that were untested in the free labor market. In addition to discussing how the parameters of southern black women’s working lives were redrawn by the carceral state, I will also account for the hidden and explicit modes of resistance female prisoners used to counter work-related abuses, as well as physical and sexualized violence.

Book Talk: "Meet Joe Copper: Masculinity and Race on Montana's World War II Home Front"
2015-01-28 12:30 - 14:00
“I realize that I am a soldier of production whose duties are as important in this war as those of the man behind the gun.” So began the pledge that many home front men took at the outset of World War II when they went to work in the factories, fields, and mines while their compatriots fought in the battlefields of Europe and on the bloody beaches of the Pacific. The male experience of working and living in wartime America is rarely examined, but the story of men like these provides a crucial counter-narrative to the national story of Rosie the Riveter and GI Joe that dominates scholarly and popular discussions of World War II.
In Meet Joe Copper, Matthew L. Basso describes the formation of a powerful, white, working-class masculine ideology in the decades prior to the war, and shows how it thrived—on the job, in the community, and through union politics. Basso recalls for us the practices and beliefs of the first- and second-generation immigrant copper workers of Montana while advancing the historical conversation on gender, class, and the formation of a white racial ethnic identity. Meet Joe Copper provides a context for our ideas of postwar masculinity, working class identity, and whiteness and finally returns the men of the home front to our reckoning of the Greatest Generation and the New Deal era.

2014-15 Benjamin Aaron Labor Law Lecture
2015-01-22 00:00

Book Talk: "Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream"
2014-12-05 12:00 - 13:30
The steady immigration of black populations from Africa and the Caribbean over the past few decades has fundamentally changed the racial, ethnic, and political landscape in the United States. But how will these “new blacks” behave politically in America? Using an original survey of New York City workers and multiple national data sources, Christina M. Greer explores the political significance of ethnicity for new immigrant and native-born blacks. In an age where racial and ethnic identities intersect, intertwine, and interact in increasingly complex ways, Black Ethnics offers a rigorous analysis of black politics and coalitions in the post-Civil Rights era.

"Labor Women" and Reflecting on API Women in Labor Today
2014-11-12 12:30 - 14:00
Labor Women is a portrait of three immigrant daughters who are part of a new generation transforming the U.S. labor movement. Quynh Nguyen is a trilingual organizer mobilizing meatpackers in their demands for a union contract. Karla Zombro is a lead organizer for the Respect at LAX Living Wage campaign. Jun Chong represents the most marginalized of workers – welfare recipients who are being forced into workfare programs. Contrary to images of the Asian American “model minority,” they are passionate advocates for social change and the labor movement as it is becoming in the 21st century.

"After Labor Law? Reframing Labor Law as the Law of Economic Subordination"
2014-11-05 12:30 - 14:00
“Labour” is a term that is ceasing to have salience as the descriptor of a class, movement, scholarly or professional domain or field of public policy. Consequently, it becomes increasingly difficult to mobilize working people for political or industrial action or even to defend their legal rights and claim their legal entitlements. Perhaps, then, the future of labour law is to become what in an historical counterfactual it might always have been: “the law of economic subordination and resistance”. Such a reframing of labour law might have many advantages.

Book Talk: "Informal Labor, Formal Politics, and Dignified Discontent in India"
2014-05-07 12:30 - 14:00
Since the 1980s, the world’s governments have decreased state welfare and thus increased the number of unprotected “informal” or “precarious” workers. As a result, more and more workers do not receive secure wages or benefits from either employers or the state. What are these workers doing to improve their livelihoods? Informal Labor, Formal Politics, and Dignified Discontent in India offers a fresh and provocative look into the alternative social movements informal workers in India are launching. It also offers a unique analysis of the conditions under which these movements succeed or fail. Drawing from 300 interviews with informal workers, government officials, and union leaders, Rina Agarwala argues that Indian informal workers are using their power as voters to demand welfare benefits (such as education, housing, and healthcare) from the state, rather than demanding traditional work benefits (such as minimum wages and job security) from employers. In addition, they are organizing at the neighborhood level, rather than the shop floor, and appealing to “citizenship,” rather than labor rights. Agarwala concludes that movements are most successful when operating under parties that compete for mass votes and support economic liberalization (even populist parties), and are least successful when operating under non-competitive electoral contexts (even those tied to communist parties).

“Mexico as an aerospace competitor? Lessons from the aerospace cluster in Querétaro”
2014-04-30 10:30 - 12:30
For many years Mexico has been looking for a strategy to create economic growth and industrial development. The results have been less than positive, however, and at times the public policy in regards to industrial development seems directionless. The Maquiladora Model is an example of a model of industrialization that did not create development and, on the contrary, generated important social problems, especially in the north border area of the country. These facts lead to questioning if Mexico is destined to offer only competitive advantages related to low labor costs and governmental benefits, such as special tax regimens or the construction of productive infrastructure with almost no cost for firms. Given this context, it is necessary to analyze whether or not the current Aerospace Industry is only taking advantage of the same competitive advantages that the Maquiladora Model did in the 90’s, or whether this represents a real opportunity to create economic and social development. This talk is oriented to show the structure of the aerospace industry in Mexico and the performance of the aerospace cluster located in the State of Querétaro.

"The Last Stronghold": Teachers' Unions and Dynamics of Labor Movement Strategy
2014-04-16 12:30 - 14:00
Following the recent economic recession, elected officials in many states used budget shortfalls as justification for anti-union legislation. Bills that would weaken or remove collective bargaining rights targeted public sector workers’ unions in particular. Additionally, K-12 teachers—the largest category of organized public sector employees—faced losing tenure protections. This talk will focus on electoral tactics, such as veto referenda or recall campaigns, as one approach to opposing such legislative threats. Methods of placing legislation on the ballot or bringing a vote on whether an elected official should stay in office exist in 34 states, yet teachers’ unions rarely used them in efforts against legislation threatening collective bargaining or tenure rights. Using qualitative comparative analysis, Pullum seeks to determine the causal conditions under which teachers’ unions did not use electoral tactics in states where they had the legal ability to do so. She argues that labor activists’ agency and capacity for strategic innovation was highly limited by state-level political and economic characteristics.

Book Talk: "Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People"
2014-04-09 12:30 - 14:00
While most people intuitively know that low unemployment is important to job seekers, they may not realize that high levels of employment actually would make an enormous difference in the lives of large segments of the workforce who already have jobs. Particularly in an era of historically high wage and income inequality, many in the workforce depend on full employment labor markets, and the bargaining power it provides, to secure a fair share of the economy’s growth. For the bottom third or even half of the wage distribution, high levels of employment are a necessary condition for improving wages, higher incomes, and better working conditions.
Getting Back to Full Employment is a follow-up to a book written a decade ago by the authors [Jared Bernstein and Dean Baker], The Benefits of Full Employment (Economic Policy Institute, 2003). It builds on the evidence presented in that book, showing that real wage growth for workers in the bottom half of the income scale is highly dependent on the overall rate of unemployment. In the late 1990s, when the United States saw its first sustained period of low unemployment in more than a quarter century, workers at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution were able to secure substantial gains in real wages. When unemployment rose in the 2001 recession, and again following the collapse of the housing bubble, most workers no longer had the bargaining power to share in the benefits of growth. The book also documents another critical yet often overlooked side effect of full employment: improved fiscal conditions (without mindless budget policies like the current sequestration). Finally, in this volume, unlike the earlier one, the authors present a broad set of policies designed to boost growth and get the unemployment rate down to a level where far more workers have a fighting chance of getting ahead.

Book Talk: "Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street Manages Main Street"
2014-04-02 00:00

Annual Conference: "Race, Labor, & the Law"
2014-02-28 08:00 - 2014-03-01 16:45
The UCLA Institute for Research and Employment presents it’s 2014 conference on Race, Labor, & the Law. In coordination with the Critical Race Studies Program at the UCLA School of Law, the conference will take place at UCLA on Friday and Saturday, February 28 and March 1, 2014.
Join leading legal scholars, social scientists, humanists and practitioners for a reframing of the relationship between race, gender, class and labor in the United States. Through interdisciplinary approaches to the subject, panelists will examine these interlocking forms of oppression; consider how the interplay between them shapes labor markets, labor hierarchies and labor and employment law; and investigate the repressive and insurgent forces involved. Panels will discuss U.S. labor, race, gender and class matters in relation to the transformation of the labor movement; immigration; the rights of indigenous peoples in the U.S.; worker voice and labor speech; prison labor and employment after re-entry; intimate labor; and women in low wage work and organizing.

The Great U-Turn: Inequality in America 25 Years Later
2014-02-25 12:30 - 14:00

Behind the Screen: The Commercial Internet Content Moderation Industry and its Workers
2014-02-20 15:00

Unfinished Business Los Angeles: History and Next Steps for California's Paid Family Leave Law
2014-02-13 18:00 - 20:00
In their new book, Unfinished Business, Eileen Appelbaumand Ruth Milkman document the history and impact of
California’s paid family leave program, the first of its kind in
the United States, which began in 2004. We will also hear
from Los Angeles community members who are working
locally and statewide to expand awareness and our rights to
take paid family leave.

Migrant Women in Belgium's Labor Market: From Invisibility to Vulnerability
2014-02-13 12:00

The Lifetime Cost of Job Displacement
2014-02-05 12:30
Major economic downturns bring large increases in permanent layoffs among workers with high prior tenure on the job. We refer to this type of job loss event as a displacement. Previous research shows that job displacements lead to large and persistent earnings losses for the affected workers. The available evidence also indicates that job displacement leads to less stability in earnings and employment, worse health outcomes, higher mortality, lower achievements by children, and other unwelcome consequences. This talk will explore a recent study by von Wachter and his colleagues.

RLE Colloquia Series — Counter Culture & American Hair: Untangling race, labor and class in salons and diners
2013-11-20 16:00 - 18:00
Author, photographer and cultural critic, Candacy Taylor has traveled over 26,000 miles throughout the United States documenting diner waitresses for her book Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress (Cornell University Press). She is now working on a project with the Library of Congress examining hair, culture and identity in America for her forthcoming book and exhibit, AMERICAN HAIR. This multimedia talk will feature what Taylor has learned about women, work, class, culture and identity on America’s main streets, urban hubs and rural byways.

Annual Ben Aaron Labor Law Lecture: The Board and Its Role on the Frontiers of Employment Law
2013-11-13 00:00
Harry I. Johnson III | Board Member, National Labor Relations Board

Book Talk: Reframing the Latino Immigration Debate Towards a Humanistic Paradigm
2013-10-09 15:00 - 17:00
In Reframing the Latino Immigration Debate: Towards a Humanistic Paradigm (San Diego State University Press, 2013), his new book of non-fiction essays, Alvaro Huerta, CSRC visiting scholar, asks readers to reassess critical political and cultural issues unfolding along the U.S./Mexico border. Paired in this volume with the photography of Antonio Turok, Huerta’s words move readers “towards a humanistic paradigm” in a work that has been called as a “must read” for students, scholars, and policy-makers alike. Huerta’s presentation will be followed by a conversation with UCLA professor of history and former CSRC director Juan Gómez-Quiñones, who provided the book’s foreword.

Film Screening: The Black Fatherhood Project
2013-07-31 18:00 - 20:30
The Black Fatherhood Project poignantly reveals a history much more complex and profound than what is often seen on the surface of events. Directed and produced by Jordan Thierry, The Black Fatherhood Project unravels the roots of Black absentee parenting through the telling of his own story, interviews with prominent historians, and dialogue among a diverse selection of dads. The discussions include personal experiences, inspirations, and insight on how communities can come together to ensure the power of a father’s love is not lost on America’s Black children.
“The film explores the issues that continue to plague the Black community,” says Thierry. “It digs deep into history to identify how Black families functioned before slavery, how it and subsequent discrimination affected black fathers’ involvement in their families, and its impact today.”
Nationwide, 67 percent of Black children live in single-parent families, predominantly with the mother. This factor alone increases the likelihood of living in poverty, low educational achievement, incarceration and abuse. This ratio has tripled since the 1960s, growing in correlation with drug crimes, prisons, and income inequality to create today’s challenges for the Black family.
The first-time filmmaker adds, “The film also reveals that while the statistics may be discouraging, there is a strong faction of black men that are breaking the cycle of fatherlessness in their families and inspiring others to do the same.”
This film screening will begin at 6:00pm on Wednesday, July 31st and will be followed by a question and answers discussion facilitated by the Director. The film can also be viewed at the film’s website BlackFatherhoodProject.com. The website also provides informational resources on fatherhood as well as a list of reputable mentor and advocacy groups.
