Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

Bridging the Gap: Connecting Academics to Funder and Foundation Initiatives
2013-03-05 09:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Professor Héctor Cordero-Guzmán will discuss the ways in which academics can connect to different types of funder and foundation initiatives, detailing strategies that can increase the chances of university based researchers to access some of the funding that is available to support research and analysis on a range of policy, organization, program and community impact issues.

The Psychology of Colorblindness
2013-04-13 14:00 - 15:30
What psychologically fuels Whites¹ attraction to racial colorblindness? What are the correlates and outcomes of colorblindness, both in terms of Whites¹ race-related attitudes and behaviors and effects on racial minorities? What are the implications for individuals and organizations when some Whites are colorblind with respect to their own identity (i.e., what we term ³racial denial²)? More broadly, how does denying the role of race in policy-making (such as restrictive immigration laws) predict support for those policies? Finally, do Whites actually view undocumented immigrants with a blind eye to race? After addressing these questions with preliminary and published data, I will discuss implications for education, workplace, and legal contexts.

Rethinking Binationalism: Binational Mexican Labor Activism in the Early 20th Century
2013-04-17 12:30 - 14:00
“Rethinking Binationalism” explores the history of binational Mexican labor activism in the early 20th century. The perspective is from a segment of the grass roots base of an under-explored part of the Industrial Workers of the World and highlights Mexican activists who were committed members of the binational Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) and, simultaneously, organized Mexicans into the IWW. In this period, as others, Mexican worker/organizers were often the engines for binational solidarity. This binationalism had deep roots in the area north of the post 1848 border. The lives and work of two traveling organizer-propagandists suggests binational (and internationalist) cross generational legacies of a commitment to labor organizing and social change which resonates in the present period.

Low Wage Workers & Organizing Conference
2013-04-19 09:00 - 2013-04-20 18:00
Sponsored with a grant from the Ford Foundation, this conference aims to stimulate research and discussion on key issues that impact low-wage workers and to focus on the particular role of groups, organizations, organizing strategies and campaigns in the lives of low wage workers. Senior scholars and thinkers together with emerging academics will address a variety of issues, including: engaged research; organizing impact; relevant legal issues; intersectionality; social movements and immigration; and emerging sectors and peripheral movements.

Book Talk — Trampling out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers
2013-05-08 12:30 - 14:00
Frank Bardacke tells the thrilling, and ultimately tragic story, of one of the most transformative labor movements in American history.
Much has been written about the United Farm Workers, but the depth of Bardacke’s investigative reporting, the range of his historical knowledge, and the complexity of his story is unparalleled. Bardacke grounds his book in the history and tradition of union organizing among Mexican farm workers. He honors farm workers as few writers have done, emphasizing their endurance and skills.
In addition to illuminating sketches of UFW activists, organizers and staff, Bardacke presents a detailed and nuanced portrayal of the religious, political and ideological background of Cesar Chavez, the charismatic and brilliant leader of the UFW. All of this is told in the context of the civil rights movement, AFL-CIO machinations, the immigration debate, the liberal left split, the war in Vietnam and California politics.
“You can take little sections out of the book and they’re the best thing ever written on the subject,” said Hillman judge Harold Meyerson.
While the story of the decline of the UFW is painful, Trampling Out the Vintage still manages to inspire through its compelling telling of how farm workers built one of the iconic social movements of our time. Anyone intent on understanding, or more importantly building a social movement, must read this book. Trampling Out the Vintage is a monumental work of labor and social history.

Book Talk — Solidarity Transformed: Labor Responses to Globalization and Crisis in Latin America
2013-05-15 12:30 - 14:00
Solidarity Transformed provides an account of how labor unions in Latin America are developing new strategies to defend the interests of the workers they represent in dynamic global and local contexts. Anner combines in-depth case studies of the auto and apparel industries in El Salvador, Honduras, Brazil, and Argentina with survey analysis.
Altogether, he documents approximately seventy labor campaigns-both successful and failed-over a period of twenty years. Anner finds that four labor strategies have dominated labor activism in recent years: transnational activist campaigns; transnational labor networks; radical flank mechanisms; and microcorporatist worker-employer pacts. The choice of which strategy to pursue is shaped by the structure of global supply chains, access to the domestic political process, and labor identities.
Mark Anner spent ten years working with labor unions in Latin America and returned to conduct eighteen months of field research for this book. His presentation will provide updates and new developments based on recent field research in the region, including travel to El Salvador in March 2013.

Migration, remittances, and development in Mexico, 1970-2012: Lessons and future challenges
2013-05-22 12:30 - 14:00
Presented by Rodolfo García Zamora, Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, México
After 40 years of a long and rising emigration from Mexico to the United States, where from 800 thousand migrants in the 70’s, the amount of mexicans increased to 12 million in 2006, and having as consequence an increasing input of remittances, which in 2007 was reaching $26 million dollars, the lessons of states like Zacatecas and Michoacan, characterized by their high intensity of international migration, are that the increasing migration and remittances input do not achieve economic and social development, because the structural causes of migration as backwardness, unemployment and marginalization are persisting, and this raises the need for new policies on Development, Migration and Human Rights, that allow exercising the right to not emigrate in a medium term.
One of the positive products of this long migration are Mexican Migrant Clubs and Federations such as the ones in Zacatecas and Michoacán, which are recognized by the promotion of the 3×1 Program, by the incidence in new government programs to migrants and their communities, for their participation in global Forums on development and migration, and recently (2010-2013), for their suggestions to the new Immigration Law and Regulations, and this year in the battle to include the issue of migration as a central axis within the National Development Plan (Plan Nacional de Desarrollo) 2013 – 2018. The possibility that these proposals can become a Development, Migration and Human Rights, comprehensive and long term State Policy will depend on the capacity and participation of Mexican civil society and transnational communities in both countries.

How Global Migration Changes the Workforce Diversity Equation
2013-05-31 13:00 - 2013-06-01 17:15
The increase in migration flows that took place in the last two decades deeply changed the composition of the workforce in many countries and sharpened the national and international debate about migrants in the labor market.
Today the topic is high on the policy agenda in many countries, for several reasons. First, labor market integration is arguably the most important condition for ensuring full and autonomous participation by immigrants in the society. However, the scale of migration and racial, ethnic, and religious differences of migrants raise new challenges. Second, in the context of demographic aging, many countries are experiencing labor and skill shortages. To tackle this, it has become important to better value the existing skills of some immigrants, and to find ways to upgrade the skills of others. The transferability and recognition of qualifications and work experience that were acquired in different contexts in the countries of origin thus become a relevant issue. Third, there is a persistent perception that migrants compete with native workers, especially those from less advantaged groups. Finally, immigrants have been among the groups hardest hit by the difficult labor market situation following the economic downturn of 2008-09. This is particularly true in western economies that are major destinations for international migrants. Governments, institutions, social partners and enterprises must play key roles in strengthening labor standards for migrants, as well as natives, at the macro and micro levels.
The conference aims at contributing to the current debate and attaining a better understanding of the causes, consequences and possible responses to these issues on a global scale, through an interdisciplinary and comparative approach. This conference will bring together scholars studying immigration, workforce diversity, and the intersection of the two from the United States, Europe, and around the world. The goal is not just to exchange information, but to advance discussions about strategies and solutions.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

"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.

“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.

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).

"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.

"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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.
