Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

Labor Studies Is Headed to the L.A. Ports
2025-11-07 07:45 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Join us to meet key players from the Port complex, including union members from the docks and environmental hazard clean-up crews, a former POLA Harbor Commissioner, and a terminal operator.
The trip features a tour of an automated port terminal, a boat tour of the port narrated by an ILWU Local 13 member and retired dockworker, and a visit to the ILWU Local 56 union hall!
Seats on the field trip bus are limited and will be allocated on a first-come come first-served basis.
Details:

Depart UCLA at 8 am sharp
Return by 4 pm
Bring your own lunch — or eat at the San Pedro Fish Market during our lunch break!
The tour does include an hour-long boat ride in the port, so be prepared to ride a boat!
The port terminal is a secure space; all attendees must have a government-issued ID (DL, passport, or matricula-type cards are all fine) and pre-register with Labor Studies

Date: November 7, 2025
Time: 7:45 AM – 4 PM
Pick Up Location: Wyton South Stop, near roundabout
RSVP HERE!

Career Foundations Series: Resume & Cover Letter 101
2025-11-13 12:00 - 13:00 | Zoom
Join the UCLA Labor Studies Department and the UCLA Career Center for a virtual workshop designed to help you craft effective resumes and cover letters.
Learn how to highlight your skills, experiences, and accomplishments to stand out to employers. Whether you’re applying for an internship, job, or fellowship, this session will provide practical tips and feedback to strengthen your application materials!
Date: November 13th, 2025
Time: 12 – 1 pm
Location: Zoom (link provided upon registration)
TO RSVP, CLICK HERE!

Drop-In Hour with Our Labor Studies SAO
2026-01-21 11:00 - 12:00 | Bunche Hall 9246
Join us for an informal meet-and-greet with our Student Affairs Officer. Whether you’re new to Labor Studies or a returning major or minor, this is a great opportunity to connect, ask questions, and enjoy coffee, bagels and fruit while learning more about program opportunities.
Date: January 21st, 2026
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Location: Bunche Hall 9246

Labor Studies Now - The U.S. Labor Movement in the 2020's: Achievements and Challenges
2026-01-29 12:00 - 13:30 | Haines Hall 130
Ruth Milkman is one of the world’s foremost sociologists of labor and labor movements, having written extensively on various topics related to work and organized labor in the United States, past and present. Her most recent books are Immigrant Labor and the New Precariat (Polity, 2020) and On Gender, Labor and Inequality (Illinois, 2016).
She was the 2016 President of the American Sociological Association and director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment from 2001 to 2008, when she was on the faculty in the Department of Sociology. She is currently Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, where she chairs the Labor Studies Department.
Date: January 29 , 2026
Time: 12 – 1:30 pm
Location: Haines Hall 130
RVSP HERE!

UCLA Industry Power Research Bootcamp
2026-03-16 - 2026-03-20
Industry Power Research Bootcamp
Convened by the UCLA Strategic Research Lab
Join the labor and other social movement researchers from around the country to learn the best ways to approach industry-based research and apply your findings to build industry-wide power.
As the NLRB continues to come under attack, unions and other labor groups that organize are increasingly looking at industries, not companies. To succeed, we need to understand how industries work and what powers and limitations come with a sectoral approach to campaigning.
In this five-day training, you will learn the basics of how to research an industry and explain your findings to members and other staff. We will bring expert campaigners to discuss key aspects of sectoral research, including:

Bounding your industry and understanding the product
How to think about supply chains
Spatial concentration and its effects on bosses and workers
Intersections between your industry and government regulators and policymakers
Considerations behind sectoral standards campaigns

The camp is designed for any movement researchers, strategic campaigners, activists, or organizers wanting to better understand how to think about sector-wide strategies.
Only accepted applicants will be admitted to the Industry Power Research Bootcamp. Accepted applicants will be notified by early January. Applications close on December 19, 2025.
Now accepting applications, click here to apply!

Event Details:

Dates: March 16–20, 2026
Time: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Location: Los Angeles (TBD)
Cost: $625 (includes training materials & refreshments)
Meals: Not included, but local dining options are available

Bootcamp Faciliators:

Justin McBride
Justin McBride is the Program Director of the UCLA Strategic Research Lab and a former union organizer. During his fifteen years in the labor movement, McBride worked on several industry-based campaigns, including in the janitorial, carwash, and construction industries.
McBride now teaches the Sectoral Analysis class in the UCLA Urban Planning program, originally designed by Goetz Wolff, the former research director of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. McBride is also the co-organizer of the UCLA Strategic Labor Research Conference.

Antara Murshed
Antara Murshed is a researcher in the Western States program at Jobs to Move America, where she focuses on corporate research and community benefit agreements in the emerging green manufacturing sector.
She has a Masters of Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA, where she focused on the intersection of transportation planning, labor, and environmental justice. Prior to graduate school, Antara worked as an environmental planner at the California Department of Transportation. She is also an alumni of the Sectoral Analysis class in the UCLA Urban Planning program.

Stay tuned for updates on guest speakers!

About The UCLA Strategic Research Lab:
The UCLA Strategic Research Lab is a capacity-building training hub and network for researchers from labor and community-based organizations. As a research unit of a public university, the SRL seeks to train strategic researchers for the common good. Besides the Coding Camp for Union Research, the Strategic Research Lab also holds its annual Strategic Labor Research Conference, one of the largest annual convenings of labor and movement researchers in the nation.
Sign up for email updates for other Strategic Research Lab events and trainings here.

UCLA Coding Bootcamp for Union Research
2026-06-01 - 2026-07-31
The UCLA Strategic Research Lab will hold a five-day intensive training in using the power of Python coding to simplify tasks for union research in the early summer of 2026. We will announce the exact dates soon.
Stay tuned and join our email list to be the first to know when the next Coding Bootcamp will take place!
The Coding Bootcamp is an intense and challenging experience! Come ready to jump feet first into a weeklong journey towards simplifying your work, discovering new data sources, and automating your most routine research tasks!
Key Training Topics:

Dynamically combine files and fuzzy match different data sources
Automate the updating of periodically disclosed data
Use APIs to bulk download data (e.g., contact information for worker lists or open government data)
Build web scraping tools to collect information such as:

Property listings
Company information
Government data
PDFs or data sets that cannot be downloaded directly

Clean, merge, and deduplicate data (e.g., worker lists, property records, company information)

No prior knowledge of Python is required. The training will start with the basics of Python on Monday, and by Friday, you will be building your own web scraping tools and compiling complex data sets.

Advice From the 2025 Coding Bootcamp Cohort:
“You should definitely attend this program if you’re thinking about it! This program really helps make coding feel so much more accessible no matter how much experience you have coming in. I have learned so many different ways to use coding to make my work so much more efficient and comprehensive.”
“It is like drinking out of a firehouse. That’s just the way this sort of thing works. Keeping a good attitude and accepting that you will be challenged is extremely crucial to being successful.”
“I have learned so much and feel so much more capable in the work I do.”

Event Details:

Dates: Summer, 2025 (TBD)
Time: Monday-Friday, all day
Location: Los Angeles (TBD)
Cost: $850 (includes training materials & refreshments)
Meals: Not included, but local dining options are available

Email srl@irle.ucla.edu for more information or if you have any questions.

About The UCLA Strategic Research Lab:
The UCLA Strategic Research Lab is a capacity-building training hub and network for researchers from labor and community-based organizations. As a research unit of a public university, the SRL seeks to train strategic researchers for the common good. Besides the Coding Camp for Union Research, the Strategic Research Lab also holds its annual Strategic Labor Research Conference, one of the largest annual convenings of labor and movement researchers in the nation.
Sign up for email updates for other Strategic Research Lab events and trainings here.
