Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

Future of Organizing Under Technological Revolution
2020-12-09 10:00 - 11:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Online
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, many countries around the world have classified food and grocery delivery workers as “essential workers.” While the pandemic has exacerbated the violation of workers’ safety and rights by platform companies, transnational activist networks across Europe, Latin America, Asia and the U.S. have strengthened existing alliances as workers frame their exposure to COVID-19 and the lack of social protections as a common ground for collective action.
As part of this panel, activists from Madrid, São Paulo and Los Angeles will discuss the experience of platform workers in different geographies of the pandemic. We will explore how labor is organizing to respond to the technological transformation of capitalism at a time of a global, political and economic crisis.
For more information, CLICK HERE.
The webinar will be broadcasted live on the UCLA Labor Studies Facebook Page.

Virtual Hangout: Mindfulness & Self-Care
2020-12-04 14:00 - 14:50 | Online
We believe that community finds a way to persist despite physical distances – so join us for our Labor Studies Zoom Hangouts! Ask faculty & staff questions, connect with peers, or just hang out in our informal and casual Zoom sessions!
Open to NEW and CURRENT students!
Theme: Join our Labor Studies community as we set mindful intentions for the rest of the quarter and learn techniques that can be used beyond virtual spaces! This student-led virtual hangout will be a space that is centered around well-being, relief, and mutual care.
Register HERE.

UCLA Labor Center Virtual Celebration
2020-11-19 19:00 - 20:00 | Online
As much as we would like to celebrate together, to ensure the safety of our guests, we will be hosting a virtual celebration. During this critical year, the work of the Labor Center—to promote worker rights, recruit a new generation of young leaders into the labor movement, and support labor and community alliances—is more important than ever.
Please join us on Facebook Live, Thursday, November 19, 7–8 pm PST. The event is free and open to all. Please register to join us.
This year we are proud to honor:
Ron Herrera, President, LA County Federation of Labor – Working-Class Hero Award
Gerry Hudson, Secretary-Treasurer, SEIU – Voice of the People Award
Linda Delp, UCLA Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program – Change Maker Award
Hilda Solis, Los Angeles County Supervisor and former US Secretary of Labor – Lifetime Achievement Award
While our celebration is free of charge, we appreciate your support for the UCLA Labor Center. Please visit our website for sponsorship opportunities and ways to support the Labor Center!

Register HERE.

2020 Workers and Learners Summit
2020-11-18 17:00 - 18:30 | Online
Are you working while you’re in school? You’re not alone. Over half of undergraduate students in Los Angeles County are also employed. The UCLA Labor Center, UCLA Labor Studies, and USAC at UCLA are excited to bring our UCLA community of workers and learners together through a new virtual meeting space. Come, and participate in this opportunity to be unmuted and share your experiences with your fellow workers and learners, and faculty. Gain access to resources that are available to you and your family. Learn about your rights as a worker and learner. Engage with our ongoing workers and learners research project, and have fun with your peers playing interactive games and participating in stress-relieving exercises in community connectivity.

Register HERE.

Virtual Hangout: Game Night & Buddy System Reveal
2020-10-28 17:00 - 17:50 | Online
We believe that community finds a way to persist despite physical distances – so join us for our Labor Studies Zoom Hangouts! Ask faculty & staff questions, connect with peers, or just hang out in our informal and casual Zoom sessions!
Open to NEW and CURRENT students!
Theme: Bring some competitive spirit for our game night and be prepared to meet your Labor Studies buddy! *You do not have to be part of the buddy system to attend the event.*
Register HERE.

“Waging Change” Film Screening
2020-10-15 16:00 - 18:00 | Online
Join UCLA Labor Studies for a Special Online Screening of @WAGINGCHANGE and Live Q&A Session!
Waging Change shines a spotlight on the challenges faced by restaurant workers trying to feed themselves and their families off tips by intertwining stories of individuals, such as Nataki Rhodes of Chicago, Andrea Velasquez of Detroit and Wardell Harvey of New Orleans with the growing movement to end the tipped minimum wage. Featuring Saru Jayaraman, Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the film reveals an American workers’ struggle hidden in plain sight– the effort to end the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 for restaurant servers and bartenders and the #MeToo movement’s efforts to end sexual harassment. Directed by Peabody award winner, Abby Ginzberg, Waging Change helps all consumers see the important role they have to play in ending this two-tiered wage system. View Trailer HERE.
Register HERE.

Labor Studies Welcome
2020-09-29 10:00 - 12:00 | Online
Labor Studies Information Session + Student Mixer. Learn about the Labor Studies Major & Minor and meet your faculty, staff, alumni, and fellow students!
Register HERE.

Virtual Hangout with Saul Sarabia
2020-08-28 14:00 - 15:00 | Online
We believe that community finds a way to persist despite physical distances – so join us for our Labor Studies Zoom Hangouts! Ask faculty & staff questions, connect with peers, or just hang out in our informal and casual Zoom sessions!
Open to NEW and CURRENT students!
Theme: Join the Labor Studies Team and IRLE researcher/criminal justice reformer Saul Sarabia for a conversation about Student Activism!

Book Talk with Inés Durán Matute
2020-03-03 13:00 - 15:00 | Chicano Studies Research Center Library, 144 Haines Hall, Los Angeles, 90095-1544, United States
IRLE Colloquia Series presents: In conversation with Inés Durán Matute on their new book, Indigenous Peoples and the Geographies of Power. Mezcala’s narratives of Neoliberal Governance.
Tracing key trends of the global-regional-local interface of power, Inés Durán Matute through the case of the indigenous community of Mezcala (Mexico) demonstrates how global political economic processes shape the lives, spaces, projects and identities of the most remote communities. Throughout the book, in-depth interviews, participant observations and text collection, offer the reader insight into the functioning of neoliberal governance, how it is sustained in networks of power and rhetorics deployed, and how it is experienced. People, as passively and actively participate in its courses of action, are being enmeshed in these geographies of power seeking out survival strategies, but also constructing autonomous projects that challenge such forms of governance.
This book, by bringing together the experience of a geopolitical locality and the literature from the Latin American Global South into the discussions within the Global Northern academia, offers an original and timely transdisciplinary approach that challenges the interpretations of power and development while also prioritizing and respecting the local production of knowledge.

Inés Durán Matute is a Postdoctoral Fulbright Scholar within the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California Los Angeles. Her research interests lie at the intersection of ethnicity, social movements, colonialism, racism and inequalities, migration, development, and democracy. Since 2008, Ines has been an active supporter of the Coca indigenous community of Mezcala (Mexico) in defense of their territory and the national struggle of indigenous peoples. Currently, she is investigating why and how activists and migrants in California engage with indigenous peoples’ struggles in Mexico.
Cosponsored by: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center
RSVP
The 2019-2020 Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) colloquia series aims to convene faculty, students, and special guests to discuss multidisciplinary research and policy issues impacting workers and their families today.
The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) houses the Labor Studies academic program and three units – UCLA Labor Center, Human Resources Roundtable, and the Labor Occupational Safety and Health program. IRLE forms wide-ranging research agendas that carry UCLA into the Los Angeles community and beyond.

Mapping Corporate Power: Activist-Researchers and Labor Coalitions in the 1970's U.S
2020-02-20 15:30 - 16:45
IRLE Colloquia Series presents:
In Conversation with Grace Davie, Mapping Corporate Power: Activist-Researchers and Labor Coalitions in the 1970’s U.S.
When working people in the U.S. sought union representation in the 1970s they faced fierce resistance from businesses willing to increase their use of bare-knuckle anti-union tactics. In response, and in the context of rising conservatism, global economic restructuring, financialization, and weak labor law enforcement, a handful of U.S. trade unions began experimenting. They turned to labor-community coalitions that tried to gain leverage over corporations using power structure analysis, financial research, media strategies, and shareholder activism.
Gracie Davie is Associate Professor of History at Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY). Her first book was Poverty Knowledge in South Africa: A Social History of Human Science, 1855-2005 (Cambridge UP, 2015). Her current book project is called “Webs of Power: Labor Union Corporate Campaigns in the United States, 1960-2015.”
RSVP
The 2019-2020 Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) colloquia series aims to convene faculty, students, and special guests to discuss multidisciplinary research and policy issues impacting workers and their families today.
The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) houses the Labor Studies academic program and three units – UCLA Labor Center, Human Resources Roundtable, and the Labor Occupational Safety and Health program. IRLE forms wide-ranging research agendas that carry UCLA into the Los Angeles community and beyond.

Book Talk with Aarti Namdev Shahani
2020-01-27 14:00 - 16:00 | Haines Hall 144, 375 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
IRLE Colloquia Series presents: In Conversation with Aarti Namdev Shahani about their new book, Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares.
The American political discourse is constantly calibrating its interpretation of what it means to be American. Coming from an undocumented family herself, writer Aarti Shahani has spent her life navigating the shifting tides of anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States. Her book Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares documents Shahani and her father’s disparate versions of the immigrant experience, coexisting as the scholarship kid at one of Manhattan’s most elite prep schools and the shopkeeper who mistakenly sells watches and calculators to the notorious Cali Cartel.
In addition to being an author, Shahani is an award-winning correspondent for NPR in Silicon Valley, covering the largest companies on Earth. Shahani remains a resounding voice advocating on behalf of our country’s immigrant community. IRLE hosts Aarti Shahani to address a question that plagues immigrants and natives alike: Who really belongs in America?
Cosponsored by: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center
RSVP
The 2019-2020 Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) colloquia series aims to convene faculty, students, and special guests to discuss multidisciplinary research and policy issues impacting workers and their families today.
The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) houses the Labor Studies academic program and three units – UCLA Labor Center, Human Resources Roundtable, and the Labor Occupational Safety and Health program. IRLE forms wide-ranging research agendas that carry UCLA into the Los Angeles community and beyond.

Book Talk with Steven Greenhouse
2019-10-14 14:00 - 16:00 | Rolfe Hall 1200
“From the longtime New York Times labor correspondent, an in-depth look at working men and women in America, the challenges they face, and how they can be re-empowered. In an era when corporate profits have soared while wages have flatlined, millions of Americans are searching for ways to improve their lives, and they’re often turning to labor unions and worker action, whether #RedforEd teachers’ strikes or the Fight for $15. Wage stagnation, low-wage work, and blighted blue-collar communities have become an all-too-common part of modern-day America, and behind these trends is a little-discussed problem: the decades-long decline in worker power.Steven Greenhouse sees this decline reflected in some of the most pressing problems facing our nation today, including income inequality, declining social mobility, the gender pay gap, and the concentration of political power in the hands of the wealthy. He rebuts the often-stated view that labor unions are outmoded–or even harmful–by recounting some of labor’s victories, and the efforts of several of today’s most innovative and successful worker groups.”
Cosponsored by: UCLA Labor Center
RSVP Here

Book Talk with Laura Velasco
2019-05-22 12:00 - 13:30 | Haines Hall 144, 375 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
IRLE Colloquia Series presents:

In conversation with Laura Velasco about her new book: Migración, trabajo y asentamiento en enclaves globales. Indígenas en Baja California Sur

Este libro analiza las condiciones de vida de trabajadores inmigrantes en territorios que constituyen enclaves globales, tanto agrícolas como turísticos de élite en el estado mexicano de Baja California. Las investigaciones que sustentan el libro muestran procesos comunes de segmentación, segregación y etnización asociadas a condiciones precarias de trabajo y residencia para los inmigrantes, aún con las arduas estrategias de reproducción social y cultural de los trabajadores y sus familias. La situación resultante conlleva a reflexionar sobre la sustentabilidad social de estos modernos enclaves globalizados, así como respecto al papel de la intervención gubernamental para aminorar sus efectos en la producción y reproducción de desigualdades étnicas y sociales.

For more information, visit http://bit.ly/LauraVelasco.

Laura Velasco Ortiz: socióloga mexicana. Doctora en Ciencias Sociales con especialidad en Sociología. Es investigadora del Departamento de Estudios Culturales de El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, desde 1991. Especialista en los temas de migración, etnicidad y género, e identidades culturales.
Entre sus publicaciones destacan los libros: en coautoría. De jornaleros a colonos: residencia, trabajo e identidad en el Valle de San Quintín. El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (2014). con Cristian Zlolniski y Marie-Laure Coubès. Métodos cualitativos y su aplicación empírica. Por los caminos de la investigación sobre migración internacional, coord. Con Marina Ariza, El Colef-UNAM, (2012); Mexican Voices of the Border Region, en coautoría con Oscar Contreras, Temple University Press, 2011; Migración, fronteras e identidades étnicas transnacionales, El Colef, 2008; Mixtec transnational Identity, University of Arizona Press, 2005.

The 2019-2020 Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) colloquia series aims to convene faculty, students, and special guests to discuss multidisciplinary research and policy issues impacting workers and their families today.

The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) houses the Labor Studies academic program and three units – UCLA Labor Center, Human Resources Roundtable, and the Labor Occupational Safety and Health program. IRLE forms wide-ranging research agendas that carry UCLA into the Los Angeles community and beyond.

Cosponsored by:

UCLA Center for Mexican Studies

In Conversation with Henry Reichman: Academic Capitalism and the Future of Academic Freedom
2019-05-20 12:00 - 13:30 | UCLA Bunche Hall 6275
IRLE Colloquia Series presents:

In conversation with Henry Reichman: Academic Capitalism and the Future of Academic Freedom.

In the wake of the 2016 election, challenges to academic freedom have intensified, higher education has become a target of attacks by conservatives, and issues of free speech on campus have grown increasingly controversial. In his recently published book, The Future of Academic Freedom, Henry Reichman explores the theory, history, and contemporary practice of academic freedom. He pays attention to such varied concerns as the meddling of politicians and corporate trustees in curriculum and university governance, the role of online education, the impact of social media, the rights of student protesters and outside speakers, the relationship between collective bargaining and academic freedom, and the influence on research and teaching of ideologically motivated donors. In this talk Reichman will summarize some of his major conclusions, focusing in particular on the threat to academic freedom posed by what some have labeled “academic capitalism.”

Henry Reichman is Professor Emeritus of History at California State University, East Bay; Chair of the American Association of University Professors Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure; and Chair of the AAUP Foundation. His book, The Future of Academic Freedom, was published in April by the Johns Hopkins University Press. He earned the Ph.D in History at UC Berkeley.

Facebook: http://bit.ly/AcademicCapitalism

The 2019-2020 Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) colloquia series aims to convene faculty, students, and special guests to discuss multidisciplinary research and policy issues impacting workers and their families today.

The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) houses the Labor Studies academic program and three units – UCLA Labor Center, Human Resources Roundtable, and the Labor Occupational Safety and Health program. IRLE forms wide-ranging research agendas that carry UCLA into the Los Angeles community and beyond.

Book Talk with Abigail L. Andrews
2019-05-13 15:00 - 16:30 | UCLA Bunche Hall 6275
IRLE Colloquia Series presents:

In conversation with Abigail L. Andrews about her new book: Undocumented Politics: Place, Gender, and the Pathways of Mexican Migrants

For twenty-one months, Abigail Andrews lived with two groups of migrants and their families in the mountains of Mexico and in the barrios of Southern California. Her nuanced comparison reveals how local laws and power dynamics shape migrants’ agency. Andrews also exposes how arbitrary policing abets gendered violence. Yet she insists that the process does not begin or end in the United States. Rather, migrants interpret their destinations in light of the hometowns they leave behind. Their counterparts in Mexico must also come to grips with migrant globalization. And on both sides of the border, men and women transform patriarchy through their battles to belong. Ambitious and intimate, Undocumented Politics reveals how the excluded find space for political voice.

Abigail Andrews is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies at the University of California-San Diego. Her research focuses on gender, migration, state power, and grassroots agency. She is particularly interested in the struggles of marginalized groups in Mexico and the United States, including indigenous peasants, deportees, and undocumented immigrants. She also co-direct the Mexican Migration Field Research Program at UCSD. Dr. Andrews has also studied power dynamics within transnational social movements and the role of gender in global politics. In collaboration with students at UCSD, she is currently conducting field research about the political impacts of forced displacement, with a focus on deportation and Central American transit through Mexico.
For more information, visit http://bit.ly/AbigailAndrews.

The 2019-2020 Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) colloquia series aims to convene faculty, students, and special guests to discuss multidisciplinary research and policy issues impacting workers and their families today.

The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) houses the Labor Studies academic program and three units – UCLA Labor Center, Human Resources Roundtable, and the Labor Occupational Safety and Health program. IRLE forms wide-ranging research agendas that carry UCLA into the Los Angeles community and beyond.

Cosponsored by:
UCLA Center for Mexican Studies

The Politics of Survival: Racial Geographies of Capitalism in Post-Disaster Puerto Rico
2019-04-24 13:00 - 14:30 | Haines Hall 144, 375 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
IRLE Colloquia Series presents:

Fernando Tormos-Aponte and his talk on”The Politics of Survival: Racial Geographies of Capitalism in Post-Disaster Puerto Rico.”

On September 20th, 2017, Hurricane María made landfall on Puerto Rico. With sustained winds of 250km per hour, the storm accomplished the unthinkable: making the economic outlook of Puerto Rico for the foreseeable future look even worse than it had the day before. Tormos argues that the hurricane exacerbated an ongoing fiscal and humanitarian crisis while revealing deep-rooted inequalities and federal and local government neglect of marginalized communities. He will address how US-Puerto Rico economic and political relations have set the stage for the crisis and how social movements are organizing to respond.

Visit us on Facebook: http://bit.ly/FernandoTormosAponte
Fernando Tormos-Aponte is a postdoctoral fellow with the Scholars Strategy Network and a research fellow of the Southern Methodist University Latino Center. His research focuses on how social movements push governments and corporations to address issues of inequality. This summer he will be a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge where he will work on his new book with José Ciro Martínez on the politics of survival and disaster relief in Puerto Rico in the wake of hurricane María.

The 2019-2020 Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) colloquia series aims to convene faculty, students, and special guests to discuss multi-disciplinary research and policy issues impacting workers and their families today.
The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) houses the Labor Studies academic program and three units – UCLA Labor Center, Human Resources Roundtable, and the Labor Occupational Safety and Health program. IRLE forms wide-ranging research agendas that carry UCLA into the Los Angeles community and beyond.

(Un)-Just Wages: Wage Theft and Day Labor in Colorado
2019-04-18 12:00 - 13:30 | UCLA Bunche Hall 6275
IRLE Colloquia Series presents:
Rebecca Galemba and her talk on Un-Just Wages: Wage Theft and Day Labor in Colorado.
The DU Just Wages Project, led by Professor Galemba, recently released results from a two year qualitative and quantitative study on wage theft experienced by day laborers in the Denver metro area. From 2015-2017, she led teams of DU graduate and undergraduate students in collaboration with community partners (El Centro Humanitario, Sturm College of Law, and Towards Justice) to conduct qualitative interviews and participant observation with 170 workers. Research teams also conducted interviews with legal agency staff, lawyers, non-profits, employers, and policymakers in order to understand the larger context in which wage theft operates. The qualitative study followed with a survey (with assistance from Dr. Randall Kuhn) of 400 day laborers coupled with Know Your Rights outreach at street corner hiring sites.

Wage theft most frequently manifested in terms of workers being paid less than they were promised and outright non-payment for work completed. 62% of day laborers had ever experienced wage theft; 19% in the 6 months prior to being surveyed. The research uncovered common patterns employers use to cheat workers out of earned wages, as well as strategies that day laborers, lawyers, state agencies, and non-profits use to recoup wages. The research found that workers had low levels of legal knowledge, but that any outreach must also be coupled with more proactive policy to hold employers and frequent industry violators accountable to make these rights actionable. Limitations within the intersection of immigration and labor law makes it difficult for low-wage immigrant workers to pursue redress while working in day labor itself poses risks of downward integration in terms of wages, working hours, and exposure to wage theft.
Visit us on Facebook: http://bit.ly/RebeccaGalemba
Rebecca Galemba is Assistant Professor of International Studies at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Her research interests include border studies, migration, informal and illicit economies, and the intersections between immigration and work. Her first book, Contraband Corridor: Making a Living at the Mexico-Guatemala Border, was published by Stanford University Press in December 2017. Her most recent projects involve students in community-based research on immigration and labor issues in Colorado. In May of 2017, she received the University of Denver’s Public Good Faculty of the Year Award, recognizing the integration of service-learning and the public good into her teaching and research.

The 2019-2020 Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) colloquia series aims to convene faculty, students, and special guests to discuss multi-disciplinary research and policy issues impacting workers and their families today.

The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) houses the Labor Studies academic program and three units – UCLA Labor Center, Human Resources Roundtable, and the Labor Occupational Safety and Health program. IRLE forms wide-ranging research agendas that carry UCLA into the Los Angeles community and beyond.
Cosponsored by:

UCLA Center for the Study of International Migration

"The Fight for Time: Migrant Day Laborers and the Politics of Precarity"
2019-04-17 12:30 - 14:00 | Haines Hall 144, 375 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
IRLE Colloquia Series presents:
In conversation with Paul Apostolidis about his new book:
The Fight for Time: Migrant Day Laborers and the Politics of Precarity.
As unauthorized migrants, day laborers are subjected to extraordinarily harsh treatment when they work and search for jobs. Yet these extremely marginalized migrants also epitomize struggles that apply throughout our increasingly precarious working world. Tracking the conditions that make day laborers both exceptions within today’s economy and fitting symbols of its dysfunctions, using intellectual resources drawn from Paulo Freire’s popular education theory, this talk sheds light on the contortions of time that define what “precarity” means. The analysis also takes lessons from day laborers’ worker centers about the kinds of organizations capable of fighting precarity for the good of all working people.

Visit us on Facebook: http://bit.ly/PaulApostolidis
Paul Apostolidis joins the Government faculty at the London School of Economics and Political Science (London, UK) in June 2019; he is currently on the Politics faculty at Whitman College (Walla Walla, WA, USA). His new book, The Fight for Time: Migrant Day Laborers and the Politics of Precarity, was released by Oxford University Press in January 2019. Previously he authored Breaks in the Chain: What Immigrant Workers Can Teach America about Democracy (University of Minnesota Press, 2010) and Stations of the Cross: Adorno and Christian Right Radio (Duke University Press, 2000). With Juliet Williams (UCLA, Gender Studies) he co-edited Public Affairs: Politics in the Age of Sex Scandals (Duke University Press, 2004). Professor Apostolidis’s articles have appeared in journals of political theory, critical theory, feminist studies, and race & ethnic studies. His teaching emphasizes public impact research and he is the founder and director of Whitman’s nationally recognized community-based research program on “The State of the State for Washington Latinos.” Professor Apostolidis received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Cornell University and his A.B. from Princeton University. He can be reached at paulapostolidis@gmail.com.

The 2019-2020 Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) colloquia series aims to convene faculty, students, and special guests to discuss multidisciplinary research and policy issues impacting workers and their families today.
The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) houses the Labor Studies academic program and three units – UCLA Labor Center, Human Resources Roundtable, and the Labor Occupational Safety and Health program. IRLE forms wide-ranging research agendas that carry UCLA into the Los Angeles community and beyond.

Cosponsored by:
UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center

Book Talk with Timothy A. Wise
2019-04-11 13:00 - 14:30 | Haines Hall 144, 375 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
IRLE Colloquia Series presents:
In conversation with Timothy A. Wise about his new book, Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food, New Press.
Join author, Timothy A. Wise on a worldwide journey to understand the continued prevalence of hunger amid plenty. If the world now has record levels of grain production, why does it also have rising indices of hunger and malnutrition? Wise makes a convincing case that increasing the industrial production of agricultural commodities does almost nothing for the world’s hungry. Oddly enough, it can even make them hungrier.
He argues that agribusiness and its well-heeled philanthropic promoters have hijacked food policies to feed corporate interests. Rather than helping the hungry eat today, they are undermining sustainable food production and destroying the natural resources—land, air, water, climate—we all will need to eat tomorrow.
For more information, visit http://bit.ly/TimothyAWise.
Timothy A. Wise is a senior researcher at the Small Planet Institute, where he directs the Land and Food Rights Program. He is also a senior research fellow at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute, where he founded and directed its Globalization and Sustainable Development Program. He previously served as executive director of the U.S.-based aid agency Grassroots International. He is the author of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food (The New Press) and Confronting Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The 2019-2020 Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) colloquia series aims to convene faculty, students, and special guests to discuss multidisciplinary research and policy issues impacting workers and their families today.

The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) houses the Labor Studies academic program and three units – UCLA Labor Center, Human Resources Roundtable, and the Labor Occupational Safety and Health program. IRLE forms wide-ranging research agendas that carry UCLA into the Los Angeles community and beyond.

Cosponsored by:
UCLA Chicana/o Studies Research Center
UCLA Center for Mexican Studies

2019 Diversity in Higher Education Research Colloquium
2019-02-07 08:30 - 2019-02-08 18:00 | Hermosa Room, Carnesale Commons, 251 Charles E Young Drive West, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Since 2014, three institutions of higher learning, one each from the United States (UCLA), South Africa (University of the Free State) and the Netherlands (Vrije Universiteit) have convened yearly to exchange, engage and research diversity, inclusivity, equity and other cleavages at the university and its production of an educated body. Our conference and collaboration explores, engages and aims to offer solutions to improve research, teaching, and service outcomes in higher education to include social justice and equity as core pillars of higher education.
The theme of this year’s conference is Spatial, Intersectional and Student Engagement in an Era of Hate. This conference aims to explore how different thinkers navigate various spaces (immigrant, poor and minority neighborhoods, safe space, queer space, other space), intersectional spaces/identities and student engagement on-campus, off-campus, digitally, visually, narratively and in other ways. The background context for this conference is the contemporary discourse, politics, schools, media, and day-to-day interactions that are divisive, mean-spirited, confrontational and tinged or directly hateful.
*The conference has reached full capacity. For any questions or concerns please contact our Operations Manager at lilyhernandez@irle.ucla.edu.
TENTATIVE AGENDA

Thursday, February 7, 2019
9:00AM-10:00AM Welcome & Opening Remarks
10:00AM-12:00PM Plenary 1: In Conversation with Intersectionality
12:00PM-1:30PM Lunch
1:30PM-3:00PM Session A of Participant Papers
3:15PM-4:45PM Session B of Participant Papers
5:00PM-6:00PM Reception
Friday, February 8, 2019
9:00AM-9:15AM Day 2 Welcome and Announcements
9:15AM-10:45PM Plenary III: International Engagement
12:30PM-2:00PM Lunch
2:00PM-3:30PM Plenary IV: Student Engagement and Service Learning
3:45PM-4:45PM Session C of Participant Papers
4:45PM-5:15PM Closure and Next Conference

Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area
2019-01-10 12:00 - 13:30 | UCLA Bunche Hall 6339, 11282 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Dockworkers have power. Often missed in commentary on today’s globalizing economy, workers in the world’s ports can harness their role, at a strategic choke point, to promote their labor rights and social justice causes. Peter Cole brings such overlooked experiences to light in an eye-opening comparative study of Durban, South Africa, and the San Francisco Bay Area, California. Path breaking research reveals how unions affected lasting change in some of the most far-reaching struggles of modern times.First, dockworkers in each city drew on longstanding radical traditions to promote racial equality. Second, they persevered when a new technology—container ships—sent a shockwave of layoffs through the industry. Finally, their commitment to black internationalism and leftist politics sparked transnational work stoppages to protest apartheid and authoritarianism.
RSVP: lindsayking@ucla.edu
Parking Information: Here

Civil Rights Leader Reverend James Lawson Jr. honored with UCLA Medal
2018-11-28 14:00 | UCLA Carnesale Commons, 251 Charles E Young Drive West, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Join us to celebrate the 60-year legacy of non-violence and activism by Reverend James Lawson Jr. with the conferral of the UCLA Medal by Chancellor Gene Block.
Rev. Lawson Jr. is known for his work in the civil rights movement along with his close friend and colleague, Martin Luther King Jr. He helped lead the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike and the Nashville sit-in movement and introduced the philosophy of nonviolent activism to many civil rights leaders.
In Los Angeles, Rev. Lawson Jr. was very involved in social justice movements. He became the founder of CLUE, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, that brought together clergy and lay leaders with laborers, low-income families, and immigrants to fight for a just economy. His efforts influenced many religious leaders to involve themselves in social and economic activism throughout Los Angeles. The conferral of the UCLA Medal to Rev. Lawson Jr. is to celebrate his contributions to non-violence and social change.
The event will take place on Wednesday, November 28, 2018, at 2:00 p.m. at the UCLA Carnesale Commons.
Please RSVP here to confirm your attendance: Reverend Lawson UCLA Medal Registration

10 Questions: What is Work? Panel Discussion
2018-11-20 18:30 - 20:30 | UCLA Kaufman Hall, 200, United States
You’re Cordially Invited!
Giving community members a special opportunity to experience the conversations that drive innovation at the university, this fall the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture presents “10 Questions,” a hybrid academic course and public event series that brings together leading minds from across the university to discuss ten fundamental questions.
This week, Willem Henri Lucas, Catherine Opie, Alfred Osborne, and Abel Valenzuela, will join Brett Steele, dean of the UCLA School of the Arts & Architecture to explore the question, “What is Work?”
Abel Valenzuela, labor and immigration expert Professor, Department of Chicana/o Studies
Professor, Department of Urban Planning
Director, UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

Fighting for Immigrants: Forum with DACA Litigators, Featuring MALDEF's Thomas Saenz
2018-10-25 17:30 - 19:00 | UCLA School of Law Rm. 1357
ACIP is sponsoring an event on Thursday, October 25 in partnership with USP, UC Immigrant Legal Services, the Public Interest Law Program and the Critical Race Studies Program at the law school.

Hour Crisis: Scheduling & Retail Worker Organizing in Los Angeles
2018-10-24 12:00 - 14:00 | UCLA Bunche Hall 6275
Los Angeles retail workers struggle with unreliable hours and
unpredictable schedules that undercut their incomes and chances of
living full and healthy lives. Recently, workers have come together to
demand a fair workweek and pass local and state ordinances for
advanced schedule notice and guaranteed hours.
Come hear organizers, industry experts, and academics share their
perspectives on historic campaigns, current policy initiatives, and
research conducted by the UCLA Labor Center and LAANE.
SPECIAL GUEST:
Lane Windham, Associate Director, Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for
Labor and the Working Poor & Author of ‘Knocking on Labor’s Door’
PANELISTS:
Janna Shadduck-Hernández, Project Director, UCLA Labor Center
Preeti Sharma, PhD Candidate, UCLA Gender Studies & Researcher, UCLA Labor Center
Nelson Motto, Director, Fair Workweek Los Angeles Coalition
MODERATOR:
Toby Higbie, Professor, UCLA Department of History

Can Immigrant Students Still Feel Safe at School in the Age of Trump
2018-10-10 12:15 - 13:30 | UCLA School of Law Rm. 1357
How are public schools and teachers being affected by the Trump administration’s immigration policies? What can public schools do to protect their students? What can we do to ensure that our schools are safe spaces for all students?
This interdisciplinary panel will address such questions by drawing on two national studies by Professors Patricia Gándara and John Rogers and they will be joined by Michael Newman, California Department of Justice, Civil Rights Enforcement Section, and Thomas Saenz, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Gig Economy Event
2018-05-30 13:00 - 15:00 | UCLA Public Affairs 2243
In an expansive city with limited public transit, the arrival of companies like Uber and Lyft has transformed daily life in LA and raised important questions about job quality, employment law, and creating an economy that works for everybody. Come hear drivers, organizers, industry experts and scholars share their perspectives on the future of ride-hailing and worker organizing in Los Angeles during the age of the gig economy.

Tam Tran Goes to Washington
2018-05-22 16:00 - 17:15 | UCLA De Neve Auditorium, 351 Charles E. Young Drive, West, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Tam Tran was a filmmaker and leader of IDEAS at UCLA. She and her best friend, Cinthya Felix, graduated from UCLA and were enrolled in graduate school at Brown and Columbia Universities. They were both nationally known leaders of the immigrant youth movement. Tam and Cinthya were tragically killed in a car crash in May of 2010.

This is a special 40-minute play that was produced by the East West Players, the renowned Asian American Theater company of Los Angeles. Given the precarious status of hundreds of thousands of immigrant youth who are currently being threatened with deportation by the current administration, this play is a timely educational resource for teachers and students to address the issue of immigration and immigrant rights.

Made in L.A. - Documentary Screening and Q&A
2017-11-21 12:30 - 15:00 | UCLA Bunche Hall 3211
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. In intimate observational style, MADE IN LA reveals the impact of the struggle on each woman’s life as they are gradually transformed by the experience. Compelling, humorous and deeply human, MADE IN LA is a story about immigration, the power of unity, and the courage it takes to find your own voice.
After the screening there will be a Q&A with organizers from the Garment Worker Center. More guests TBA!

Free Screening of Union Time: Fighting for Workers’ Rights
2017-11-07 16:30 - 18:00 | UCLA Public Affairs 2243
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 Justice@Smithfield campaign brought national attention to the campaign. The victory led to the formation of UFCW Local 1208 and fair working conditions for 5,000 workers.
