IRLE Publications

This is the seventh in a series of annual reports to examine relationships between diversity and the bottom line in the Hollywood entertainment industry. Part 1, which focuses on 2018 and 2019 Hollywood theatrical films, was released in February 2020. This report, Part 2, considers the latest two television seasons since the previous Hollywood Diversity Report release — the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons. It examines 453 scripted broadcast, cable and digital platform television shows from the 201718 season and 463 such shows from 2018-19 in order to document the degree to which women and people of color are present in front of and behind the camera. It discusses any patterns between these findings and conventional and social media audience ratings.

Media Contact

Barbra Ramos, bramos@stratcomm.ucla.edu; Willa Needham, willaneedham@ucla.edu

A UCLA study published today, Worker Ownership, COVID-19, and the Future of the Gig Economy, examined the current conditions of gig work in California in the wake of the pandemic. The report also evaluated a California legislative proposal called the Cooperative Economy Act (CEA) that would introduce worker ownership into the gig economy, fundamentally restructuring the relationship between workers and platforms like Uber, Lyft, and Instacart.

Media Contact

Emily Jo Wharry, emilyjowharry@g.ucla.edu

A new report from the UCLA Labor Center, a unit of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, and the United Food and Commercial Workers OUTreach, found that advocacy efforts by rank-and-file members of the United Food and Commercial Workers broadly support union organizing for safer and more equitable workplaces for LGBTQ+ workers in the U.S. and Canada, but the fight toward ending workplace discrimination is far from over.

Media Contact

Emily Jo Wharry, emilyjowharry@g.ucla.edu

Students from the 2020 UCLA Labor Summer Research Program, a six-week concurrent seminar and field research class founded by the UCLA Labor Center and taught under the UCLA Labor Studies program, released a research brief with new data on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the worker and learner population. Based on 138 surveys and 25 interviews, the brief Workers and Learners during a Global Pandemic and Social Uprising documents how the academic, employment, and life experiences of workers and learners changed since the onset of the global health crisis.

Media Contact

Emily Jo Wharry, emilyjowharry@g.ucla.edu

Health disadvantages stem from unsafe occupational conditions and an overlapping array of adverse social experiences. These findings highlight the need to develop and evaluate policies that protect all workers regardless of socioeconomic position and immigration status.

This brief summarizes, contextualizes, and addresses the policy implications of research reported in “Employer Aversion to Criminal Records: An Experimental Study of Mechanisms,” by N. F. Sugie, N. D. Zatz, and D. Augustine, Criminology, 58(1).

This paper addresses how interest associations have responded to the entry of digital-platform corporations into taxi and limousine markets; whether and why interest associations have regarded the market-disrupting strategies of these corporations as a unifying threat or as an opportunity to pursue and enforce their particularistic interests; and what role existing associational fields play in shaping interest associations’ responses.

A new report from the Center for the Advancement of Racial Equity at the UCLA Labor Center, a unit of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, offers a blueprint for COVID-19 recovery and reinvestment in the public sector to promote economic opportunities for Black workers. Through the most recent government data and relevant literature Reimagined Recovery: Black Workers, the Public Sector, and COVID-19 speaks to the demands and the causes of local uprisings, with concrete recommendations for recovery in Los Angeles County.

Media Contact

Emily Jo Wharry, emilyjowharry@g.ucla.edu

This research project, led by IRLE director Chris Tilly, looks at variations and change in retail job quality in the US in the context of global comparisons with Mexico and several European countries, including Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Young workers are an integral part of the U.S. economy, with one third of the national workforce between the ages of 18-34. They are concentrated in the service sector and are the faces that greet us in coffee shops, retail stores, restaurants, and grocery markets. Despite their visibility, there is a lack of understanding about who working youth really are. This curriculum serves as a guide for the UCLA Labor Center’s animated short film, I am a #YoungWorker. The animated short film is a part of a larger multi-media project by the same name that uses data, stories, and images, including documentary filmmaking, a photograph gallery, and online stories. Specifically, the animated short film complements and stems from the 2015 groundbreaking I am a #YoungWorker report.

Media Contact

Emily Jo Wharry, emilyjowharry@g.ucla.edu