IRLE Welcomes New Director Chris Tilly. Recently appointed as Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA, Chris Tilly will take over the directorship from Ruth Milkman, who has served since 2001. Tilly, who has published extensively on labor market issues, received his Ph.D. at MIT in 1989.  For the past twenty years, he has taught at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, where he was Professor of Regional Economic and Social Development and a Research Associate at the Center for Industrial Competitiveness.

IRLE Issues New Report on Unionization. Union membership is rising in Los Angeles, California and the U.S. View the full report.

The UC Labor and Employment Research Fund invites faculty and graduate student proposals for 2008-09, pending approval of the California state budget. The application deadline is Friday, October 10, 2008. Read more and apply.

New Postdoctoral Scholars Join IRLE. Two new postdoctoral scholars have been appointed for the 2008-09 academic year. We are pleased to welcome John Ahlquist, a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Washington, who studies the relationship between union federation structure and economic policy; and Angela Stuesse, a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, who studies Black and Latino workers in the Mississippi poultry industry.  Meanwhile, our 2007-08 postdoctoral scholars are moving on to new positions:   Jennifer Luff will be teaching at UC Irvine, and Matt Vidal at King’s College in London.

New Publication Honors the Life of Benjamin Aaron. A Life in Labor Law: The Memoirs of Benjamin Aaron "presents a remarkably readable and vibrant firsthand account of key events in labor relations
in the second half of the twentieth century..." –Katherine V.W. Stone, UCLA Law School. Read more and order the book.

IRLE Houses Research Project on Labor Law Violations
With funding from the Haynes Foundation, IRLE Director Ruth Milkman and Labor Center Project Director Victor Narro are launching a large-scale survey research project on labor law violations among immigrants and other low-wage workers in Los Angeles, in coordination with other researchers in New York and Chicago. information, Read the survey summary (PDF).