Recent research has revealed that contrary to the expectations generated by globalization, there is no automatic correlation linking world trade expansion and multinational companies, product innovation, and more generally, economic progress (measured in terms of growth) with social progress. On the contrary, there is evidence showing that even when there has been a significant job […]
Today precarious work presents perhaps the greatest global challenge to worker well-being, and has become a major rallying point for worker mobilization around the world. This conference focuses on analyzing the growth of precarious employment and informal labor, its consequences for workers and their families, the challenges it poses to worker organizing and collective mobilization, […]
Delving beneath Southern California’s popular image as a sunny frontier of leisure and ease, this book tells the dynamic story of the life and labor of Los Angeles’s large working class. In a sweeping narrative that takes into account more than a century of labor history, John H. M. Laslett acknowledges the advantages Southern California’s […]
Unionism and collective bargaining among U.S. state and local government employees are being widely debated, and some of these governments have sharply reduced or eliminated public employee unionism and bargaining rights. Such actions are based on a belief that fiscal adversity facing state and local governments stems mainly from the over-compensation of public employees that […]
Labor activists are increasingly cooperating across national borders in campaigns aimed at convincing transnational corporations to improve wages, working conditions, and labor rights. Yet to date there are no systematic studies of why some transnational labor alliances succeed while others do not. This book thus develops a causal theory of success and failure in transnational […]
Now more than ever, in this divided political era, higher education institutions like UCLA have an important role to play in upholding workers’ rights. Universities are where rigorous data-driven research happens on pressing economic, workplace, and political issues. They are where students develop research and critical thinking skills and engage directly in the cities […]
Professor Tony Royle, University of York What are the challenges associated with building effective global union campaigns? One way to answer this question is to examine the development of the ‘Fight for 15’ campaign. The campaign, which began in 2012 in New York, went global in 2014. It involved low-paid workers around the world. Professor […]
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Union Time tells the story of one of the greatest union victory of the 21st century—the fight to organize Smithfield Foods’ pork processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina. From 1993 to 2008, workers struggled against dangerous working conditions, intimidation, and low pay. They were organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, whose […]
MADE IN LA is an Emmy award-winning feature documentary that follows the remarkable story of three Latina immigrants working in Los Angeles garment sweatshops as they embark on a three-year odyssey to win basic labor protections from the clothing retailer, Forever 21.
