IRLE Publications

UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment publications can also be found at eScholarship® which provides scholarly publishing and repository services that enable departments, research units, publishing programs, and individual scholars associated with the University of California to have direct control over the creation and dissemination of the full range of their scholarship. Learn more here.



Stories from five union organizers from Vietnam and five Vietnamese American union organizers capture their hope, determination, and perseverance against the formidable obstacles they face in organizing workers to improve their jobs and their lives.

This collection of personal stories, campaign analysis, and an abbreviated timeline tells one of America’s greatest stories of women of color standing together to demand fair wages, benefits, and the right to be "invisible no more."

Miguel Contreras: Legacy of a Labor Leader

Kent Wong and Michael Viola

January 1, 2009

Economic Justice, Immigration, Publications, Working Class History, Book/Edited Volume

This book explores Miguel’s roots with the United Farm Workers union, revitalizing the Los Angeles labor movement, the struggle for immigrant rights, building labor’s political power, and Miguel’s lasting legacy.

The stories of Organizing Prosperity are an examination of the role that unionism has played in lifting up workers, communities, and even businesses themselves in a dozen American occupations and industries.

The Gloves-Off Economy: Workplace Standards at the Bottom of America’s Labor Market

Annette Bernhardt, Heather Boushey, Laura Dresser and Chris Tilly

September 12, 2008

Economic Justice, Labor and Occupational Safety, Publications, Working Class History, Book/Edited Volume

This book examines a range of gloves-off practices, the workers who are affected by them, and strategies for enforcing workplace standards.

Underground Undergrads provides a summary of the history of legislation impacting undocumented students in higher education along with a resource guide of organizations that advocate for student rights.

This book is a memoir by a major figure in U.S. industrial relations and labor law, Benjamin Aaron, and provides an engaging account of half a century of U.S. labor relations history.

A new book of interviews and photos from Asian Pacific American labor organizers who are helping to change the US Labor Movement.

This research investigates why and how US unions use in-depth, strategic research to build power, and why and how it works.