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.



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.

The Future of Work: From Dystopia to Utopia?

Peter Evans, Chris Tilly

November 15, 2026

Publications, The Future of Work, Paper

Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy

Ruth Milkman, Joshua Bloom and Victor Narro

January 1, 2010

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

Working for Justice, which includes eleven case studies of recent low-wage worker organizing campaigns in Los Angeles, makes the case for a distinctive "L.A. Model" of union and worker center organizing.

Dreams Deported: Immigrant Youth and Families Resist Deportation

Kent Wong and Nancy Guarneros

January 1, 2015

Immigration, Publications, Book/Edited Volume

Dreams Deported: Immigrant Youth and Families Resist Deportation is a UCLA student publication featuring stories of deportation and of the courageous immigrant youth and families who have led the national campaign against deportations and successfully challenged the president of the United States to act.