About the IRLE |
The IRLE consists of four units: the IRLE Academic Unit, the Center for Labor Research and Education (Labor Center), the Human Resource Round Table (HARRT), and the Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program (LOSH), which is also affiliated with the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. Together, these units carry out a wide range of research, education, and outreach activities, some based on campus and others reaching into Los Angeles area communities. The IRLE’s work is closely aligned with UCLA’s mission of academic excellence, diversity, and civic engagement. Click here for a summary of how IRLE serves the UCLA mission. The three units other than the Academic Unit have distinct websites describing their work. Please follow the links above for information on those three units. Here we also provide more information on the Academic Unit. It is important to emphasize that the other units share in academic research and education as well. However, they also carry out an important component of outreach to off-campus constituencies including labor and community organizations, businesses, and policy-makers. |
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The IRLE Academic Unit
The IRLE Academic Unit carries out and sponsors academic research on the UCLA campus on a wide variety of labor and employment topics, with an emphasis on policy research relevant to the challenges facing working people. Although work and labor have been radically transformed in recent years, many of the basic problems that have for decades stimulated research on labor and employment continue to command attention. Research sponsored by the Institute focuses on:
- The nature of the employment relationship and the key sociological, economic, technological, and political forces that help to shape it.
- Shifting patterns of race, ethnicity, gender, and immigration and their impact on social relations in the workplace.
- The conditions under which labor unions engage in efforts to organize workers, and the factors that shape the collective bargaining process in unionized settings.
- The key forces that shape managerial approaches to industrial relations and human resource management.
- The impact on relations between workers and employers of deregulation, globalization, and the growth of economic inequality.
The Institute’s research ranges from looking specifically at Los Angeles to examining and comparing global patterns.
The Academic Unit also promotes scholarly discussion through colloquia, conferences, and scholarly visitors and exchanges. It oversees the undergraduate Minor in Labor and Workplace Studies jointly with the Labor Center.
The Academic Unit is governed by the Faculty Advisory Committee.
The Institute’s History
At the end of World War II, when organized labor in the United States was at the peak of its political power and influence, industrial relations units were established at many universities around the nation. In 1945, Governor Earl Warren established two such units at the University of California: one at UCLA, the other at Berkeley. Clark Kerr, the founding director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Industrial Relations, later recalled, “We came in as the very first effort of this big university to make contact with the trade unions. It was Earl Warren’s way of saying that the unions were recognized as an important part of California society.”
In the decades since its founding, the UCLA Institute has played an important role in the intellectual life of the university, and it also has contributed to the national dialogue on employment and labor issues. The establishment of the Center for Labor Research and Education within the Institute in 1964 further consolidated the ties between the labor movement and the university. But as the power of organized labor waned in the 1970s and 1980s, the Institute was faced with substantial budget cuts. Academic interest in the traditional field of industrial relations also declined during this period. In 1995, however, new leadership came into power at the national AFL-CIO and, soon after, organized labor in California was revitalized, leading to renewed intellectual interest in labor and employment issues as well. This led to a major new initiative in 2000, when the state legislature established the UC Institute for Labor and Employment (ILE), a research program housed jointly at UCLA and UC Berkeley which built on the two IIRs that had been established 44 years earlier.
In December 2003, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal state of emergency and eliminated ILE’s budget for the remainder of the fiscal year. In early 2004, after an outpouring of public support, the University agreed to cover most staff salaries through June 2004. Beginning in 2004–05, the work of the ILE was restructured, maintaining the statewide research funding on all UC campuses through a new systemwide Labor and Research Education Fund. Other activities continued to be housed at the UCLA and UC Berkeley Institutes, which both changed their names in spring 2007, and are now known as the Institutes for Research on Labor and Employment. The Miguel Contreras Labor Program, which serves as an umbrella over all the UC labor research and education programs, was approved by the UC Regents in early 2007.
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