Established | 1964 |
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Parent institution | UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, University of California, Los Angeles |
Budget | USD 4 million a year, as of 2005. [1] |
Director | Kent Wong |
Administrative staff | 37 (2014) |
Location | , , |
Website | www |
The Labor Center is a research and extension department at the University of California Los Angeles focused on organized labor and labor rights. [2] [3] It was created in 1964 as the Center for Labor Research and Education and is a unit of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. [4]
As organized labor in the U.S. reached its height of influence after the Second World War, California lawmakers appropriated funds for the University of California Los Angeles and the University of Berkeley, California to launch industrial relations programs, an initiative also supported by Republican Governor Earl Warren. [5] These Institutes of Industrial Relations (now the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment) were tasked with outreach to both employers and trade unions, but by the 1960s Labor felt itself the junior partner in the arrangement. An agreement between the California AFL-CIO and the University of California led in 1964 to the founding of Centers for Labor Research and Education at UCLA and UC Berkeley focusing on issues such as job displacement, the needs of white collar unions, reducing hours of work, and the problems of unemployment. In 2002, the Labor Center opened a downtown location overlooking MacArthur Park in a building that was formerly International Ladies' Garment Workers Union hall. [6] The Downtown Labor Center has supported groups such as the National Day Labor Organization Network, the California Construction Academy, and the Los Angeles Black Worker Center. The Labor Center is also home to the Dream Resource Center, an action research center focusing on issues of immigrant integration, particularly related to undocumented youth. Labor Center research has led to county and state actions to mitigate wage theft. [7] In 2021, the Labor Center's building was rededicated as the UCLA James M. Lawson, Jr. Worker Justice Center.
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, the system is composed of its ten campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz, along with numerous research centers and academic abroad centers. The system is the state's land-grant university. Major publications generally rank most UC campuses as being among the best universities in the world. In 1900, UC was one of the founders of the Association of American Universities and since the 1970s seven of its campuses, in addition to Berkeley, have been admitted to the association. Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Diego are considered Public Ivies, making California the state with the most universities in the nation to hold the title. UC campuses have large numbers of distinguished faculty in almost every academic discipline, with UC faculty and researchers having won 71 Nobel Prizes as of 2021.
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the California State Normal School which later evolved into San José State University. The branch was transferred to the University of California to become the Southern Branch of the University of California in 1919, making it the second-oldest of the ten-campus University of California system after the University of California, Berkeley.
Loyola Law School is the law school of Loyola Marymount University, a private Catholic university in Los Angeles, California. Loyola was established in 1920.
Proposition 209 is a California ballot proposition which, upon approval in November 1996, amended the state constitution to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education. Modeled on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the California Civil Rights Initiative was authored by two California academics, Glynn Custred and Tom Wood. It was the first electoral test of affirmative action policies in North America. It passed with 55% in favor to 45% opposed, thereby banning affirmative action in the state's public sector.
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influence working conditions in the relations of employment. One of the most prominent is the right to freedom of association, otherwise known as the right to organize. Workers organized in trade unions exercise the right to collective bargaining to improve working conditions.
The UCLA School of Education and Information Studies is one of the academic and professional schools at the University of California, Los Angeles. Located in Los Angeles, California, the school combines two departments. Established in 1881, the school is the oldest unit at UCLA, having been founded as a normal school prior to the establishment of the university. It was incorporated into the University of California in 1919.
Worker centers are non-profit community-based mediating organizations that organize and provide support to communities of low wage workers who are not already members of a collective bargaining organization or have been legally excluded from coverage by U.S. labor laws. Many worker centers in the United States focus on immigrant and low-wage workers in sectors such as restaurant, construction, day labor and agriculture.
The Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA), was founded in 1947 as the Industrial Relations Research Association. LERA is an organization for professionals in industrial relations and human resources. Headquartered at the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, the organization has more than 3,000 members at the national level and in its local chapters. LERA is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that draws its members from the ranks of academia, management, labor and "neutrals".
Elaine Bernard is the executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She is also a member of the interim consultative committee of the International Organization for a Participatory Society which she describes as offering "an opportunity to reach across borders, time zones, organizations, communities, and individual interests and grow solidarity".
Ruth Milkman is an American sociologist of labor and labor movements. She is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and the director of research at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. Between 1988 and 2009 Milkman taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she directed the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.
María Elena Durazo is an American politician serving in the California State Senate. A Democrat, from 2018 to 2022 she represented the 24th State Senatorial district and has been representing the 26th district since 2022 which encompasses Central Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, and Vernon.
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) traces back to the 19th century when the institution operated as a teachers' college. It grew in size and scope for nearly four decades on two Los Angeles campuses before California governor William D. Stephens signed a bill into law in 1919 to establish the Southern Branch of the University of California. As the university broke ground for its new Westwood campus in 1927 and dissatisfaction grew for the "Southern Branch" name, the UC Regents formally adopted the "University of California at Los Angeles" name and "U.C.L.A." abbreviation that year. The "at" was removed in 1958 and "UCLA" without periods became the preferred stylization under Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy in the 1960s. In the first century after its founding, UCLA established itself as a leading research university with global impact across arts and culture, education, health care, technology and more.
The California Labor Code, more formally known as "the Labor Code", is a collection of civil law statutes for the State of California. The code is made up of statutes which govern the general obligations and rights of persons within the jurisdiction of the State of California. The stated goal of the Department of Industrial Relations is to promote and develop the welfare of the wage earners of California, to improve their working conditions and to advance their opportunities for profitable employment."
John Francis Henning was a U.S. labor leader, civil servant, and a former U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand (1967–1969) and Under Secretary of Labor (1962–1967). Called "one of organized labor's greatest leaders" and "legendary" for his defense of labor, he is also credited with a positive role in the defense of minimum wage laws and civil rights.
Wage theft is the failing to pay wages or provide employee benefits owed to an employee by contract or law. It can be conducted by employers in various ways, among them failing to pay overtime; violating minimum-wage laws; the misclassification of employees as independent contractors; illegal deductions in pay; forcing employees to work "off the clock", not paying annual leave or holiday entitlements, or simply not paying an employee at all.
Michael Reich is a Polish-born economist who primarily focuses on labor economics and political economy. Currently, Reich is a professor of economics and co-chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) at the University of California at Berkeley. He served as director of IRLE from 2004 to 2015. In 1968, he helped found the Union for Radical Political Economics.
The UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) is an interdisciplinary research unit within the College of Letters & Science, Division of Social Science, dedicated to research, teaching, and discussion of labor and employment issues. It was founded in 1945 as the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations. It is one of the two research programs in the University of California system along with the UC Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. The IRLE consists of four bodies: the IRLE Academic Unit, UCLA Labor Center, Human Resources Round Table, and the Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program.
The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor was started in 1885. Originally, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor was split into five individual unions of bakers, cigar makers, printers, tailors, and carpenters. Now they represent over 300 unions, about 800,000 people, throughout Los Angeles County, making it the second largest in the country. “A survey published in December 2003 showed that the three largest unions in the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor were SEIU 434B, SEIU 399 with forty-five thousand health care and other employees, and the United Teachers of Los Angeles .” They have helped make Los Angeles a union city. Their mission is to “ promote a voice for workers through organizing themselves into unions, building strong coalitions of labor, community, faith, and responsible businesses, engaging in both organizing and political campaigns, electing pro-union and pro-worker candidates and advancing public policies that support workers, families and local communities.” They also encourage people to help make change by voting. The Los Angeles County Federation of labor is a major focal point for new American labor movement. Recently, the impressive progression of Los Angeles becoming a union city has become a stand out model for other non-union cities because of Los Angeles’ anti-union history. Los Angeles combines the economic development activism and the refined political work of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.
On August 2, 1995, 72 Thai nationals were found working in conditions of slavery in a makeshift garment factory consisting of a row of residential duplexes in El Monte, California, just east of Los Angeles. This case is considered the first recognized case of modern-day slavery in the United States since the abolition of slavery. It would serve as a wake-up call for the world to the global phenomenon of human trafficking and modern-day slavery and would begin the anti-trafficking movement in the United States with the Thai Community Development Center as its pioneer. The case would also lead to the passage of California laws to reform the garment industry and end sweatshop abuses through independent monitoring and a code of conduct and then eventually to the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) passed by the United States Congress (later known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.
The Fast Food Accountability and Standards (FAST) Recovery Act is a Californian law which brings multiple reforms to the state's fast food industry. The bill's provisions aim to allow workers and California state to hold fast-food chains responsible for issues like wage theft and overtime pay, and establish a council which itself shall be responsible for establishing minimum standards for fast food workers. The regulations will apply to any chain in California that has at least 100 stores nationwide that share a common brand. The bill has since been passed by both the Assembly and State Senate, and was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on September 5, 2022.