The UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment supports faculty and graduate student research on employment and labor topics in a variety of academic disciplines. The Institute also sponsors colloquia, conferences and other public programming, is home to the undergraduate minor in Labor and Workplace Studies at UCLA, and carries out educational outreach on workplace issues to constituencies outside the university. The Institute, in addition to the Academic Unit, includes three affiliate organizations: the UCLA Labor Center, the Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program, and the Human Resources Round Table.

News & Announcements

 

IRLE Publishes its Third Research Brief: "Unions and Education Justice: The Case of SEIU Local 1877 Janitors and the “Parent University”

The third brief in our series of Research and Policy Briefs highlights the work of the Service Employees International Union Local 1877, the ULCA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, UCLA School of Law’s Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, and the UCLA Labor Center in understanding and addressing the educational issues facing union members’ children. SEIU Local 1877 has sponsored “Parent University” workshops which teach members about topics that will help them to support their own children’s academic success and advocate for school improvements. SEIU Local 1877 is also working with a collaborative of unions and community groups to expand upon the Parent University work and stay involved in children’s education.

 

“Work and Inequality in the Global Economy” will bring leading Chinese, Mexican, and US experts to UCLA October 8-10

IRLE, along with a number of co-sponsors, is presenting “Work and Inequality in the Global Economy: China, Mexico, and the United States” on October 8-10. Speakers from the 3 countries will include former Enrique Dussel Peters (UNAM), Ching-Kwan Lee (UCLA), Bertha Lujan (Frente Autentico de Trabajo), US Labor Secretary Ray Marshall, Dorothy Solinger (UC Irvine), Shen Yuan (Tsinghua University), and many others. They will address themes including economic crisis and restructuring, global migration, the role of transnational corporations, and strategies for overcoming inequality.

 

IRLE Publishes The State of the Unions in 2009:
A Profile of Union Membership in Los Angeles, California and the Nation

For several decades, the nation’s unionization rate – the percentage of all employed wage and salary workers who are union members – had suffered serious decline. There has been a slight uptick over the past two years, however, countering the long-term downward trend. Unionization rates for California and the Los Angeles metropolitan area have remained more stable leading up to the recent increase, which has been more pronounced in the state and in Los Angeles than in the country as a whole. IRLE’s publication, The State of the Unions in 2009: A Profile of Union Membership in Los Angeles, California and the Nation provides an analysis of the recent trends in unionization in the United States, California, and Los Angeles.

 

IRLE Project on Workplace Violations

With support from the Haynes and Russell Sage Foundations, former IRLE Director Ruth Milkman and Project Director Victor Narro, along with the National Employment Law Project and the UIC Center for Urban Economic Development, jointly released a report on employment and labor law violations in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. A separate report focused on labor law violations in Los Angeles will appear in late 2009.

 

New report: "Confronting the Gloves-Off Economy: America's Broken Labor Standards and How to Fix Them"

Across the United States, growing numbers of employers are breaking, bending, or evading long-established laws and standards designed to protect workers, from the minimum wage to job safety rules to the right to organize. A new report by IRLE brings together research on the “gloves-off economy” and what to do about it.