Scholarly Publications

Democratic Policing and Officer Well-Being

Events

Past Events

Union Organizing in the Early Care and Education Workforce

IRLE Director's Room 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley

Join us for a UC Berkeley graduate student seminar on union organizing in the early care and education sector. Using case studies from California and New Mexico, law students Dalton A. Valerio and Sam Goity will present several strategies for organizing. The seminar is based on their paper, Analysis of Labor Organizing, Unionization, and Collective Bargaining Strategies for the Early Education Workforce, which will be published by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. A discussion following the 15-minute presentation will look at organizing efforts in gig industries and/or fissured workforces such as ECE, including successes and challenges, and…

Author Talk: Richard McGahey on Unequal Cities

IRLE Director's Room 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley

Join us for an in-person book talk with economist Richard McGahey on his new book, Unequal Cities: Overcoming Anti-Urban Bias to Reduce Inequality in the United States. About the Book Cities are central to prosperity: they are hubs of innovation and growth. However, the economic vitality of wealthy cities is marred by persistent and pervasive inequality—and deeply entrenched anti-urban policies and politics limit the options to address it. Structural racism, suburban subsidies, regional government fragmentation, the hostility of state legislatures, and federal policy all contribute to an unequal status quo that underfunds cities while preventing them from pursuing fairer outcomes.…

Davefest

University of California, Berkeley

Program Venue Transport Hotel Contact   Thanks to all who joined us in a celebration of David Card's tremendous contributions to both Economics and the lives of his students, coauthors, and colleagues! >> Watch the livestream of the Friday, June 3 Session  >> Watch the livestream of the Saturday, June 4 Session Here's a recent article about DaveFest: "A far-flung economics network celebrates Berkeley Nobel winner David Card", by Edward Lempinen (Photo credit: Julian Meyn). Read this recent article about David Card's mentorship: "Learning from a Laureate: Dr. David E. Card by Florence Neymotin, PhD" Click here for event photos.…

[CANCELLED] Exclusion and Extraction: A Symposium on Criminal Justice Contact and Labor Reallocation

This event has been cancelled.Featuring legal scholars, social scientists, justice reform leaders, and others, this symposium will highlight emerging research on the role of the penal state in shaping the flow of individuals into and out of the labor market. Panels will examine how the state excludes justice-involved individuals from labor market opportunities, while also extracting labor from the same individuals caught in the web of various penal arrangements.ProgramSchedule and panel details forthcoming.ParticipantsOrganized by Sandra Susan Smith, UC BerkeleyPanelists and Speakers:Edward Flores, UC MercedGeorge Galvis, Communities United for Restorative Youth JusticeMichael Gibson-Light, University of ArizonaDavid Harding, Berkeley SociologyErin Hatton, University…

White Devil’s Daughter: the Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown

Julia Flynn Siler’s new book documents the fight against the trafficking of Chinese women and girls in San Francisco during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Siler emphasizes the role of both white and Asian women in the struggle against sexual slavery, telling their stories with a twenty-first century feminist perspective. A journalist and author, Siler has written for Business Week and the Wall Street Journal. In addition to “The White Devil’s Daughter,” she is the author of “Hawaii’s Last Kingdom” and “The House of Mondavi.”The session will be on Thursday, November 14, from 7 to 9:15 p.m. at the UCB Institute for…

The Bargaining Power of Older Workers and the US Labor Market

Workers over age 55 are projected to fill more than half of the 11.4 million net new jobs created between 2016 and 2026. Despite their numbers, older workers’ bargaining power in the labor market has been declining, threatening to suppress wages and working conditions for all workers.Ghilarducci, a nationally-recognized expert in retirement security, will discuss seven reasons older workers have lost bargaining power:Eroding retirement income security;Decline of unions;More insecure employment relationships;Persistent age discrimination;Geographical immobility;Ineligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC); andOlder workers’ relative propensity to work for smaller firms.  Register  About the SpeakerTeresa Ghilarducci is a labor economist and nationally-recognized…

The Relationship Between Union Membership and Net Fiscal Impact

What is the net fiscal impact of an individual's union membership status? What is the effect on taxes they pay and cost of public benefits they receive? Using data from the Current Population Survey, this talk will present evidence on how labor relations interact with public economics, suggesting that union membership has a positive net fiscal impact through the worker?level channels studied. Register   Lunch provided with RSVP About the SpeakerJose Pacas began working at the MPC as a research assistant between 2012 and 2015. After a couple of years as an economist for the Poverty Statistics Branch at the US…

Unbound: How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do about It

Do we have to choose between equality and prosperity? Many think that reducing economic inequality would require such heavy-handed interference with market forces that it would stifle economic growth. Heather Boushey insists that rising inequality actually undermines growth in three ways. It obstructs the supply of talent, ideas, and capital as wealthy families monopolize the best educational, social, and economic opportunities. It also subverts private competition and public investment. Powerful corporations muscle competitors out of business, in the process costing consumers, suppressing wages, and hobbling innovation, while governments underfund key public goods that make the American Dream possible, from schools to…

Chiura Obata: An American Modern

UC Berkeley California Studies Dinner Seminar, September 11, 2019: Kimi Kodani Hill, “Chiura Obata, an American Modern”.The late Chiura Obata was a prominent California artist and Professor of Art at UC Berkeley. A Japanese immigrant, he was particularly well known for his paintings of the Sierra Nevada and of the Topaz, Utah camp at which he was incarcerated during World War II. Currently he is the subject of a major retrospective exhibit at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. According to San Francisco Chronicle art critic Charles Desmarais, he left “a body of work exciting and fresh even today.” Obama’s…

IRLE Fall Open House

Come celebrate the start of the semester at IRLE’s Fall Open House. Connect with faculty, students, policy researchers, labor advocates, and visiting scholars. Learn about opportunities to get involved, from funding and publishing to courses and working groups.Enjoy student artwork produced by Art for Social Change, on view in our newly renovated student work space.Refreshments served.

Immigration Reform in Californian Agriculture and the Tech Industry

Heyns Room, The Faculty Club

The workshop aims to discuss the consequences of both labor shortages and immigration policies in Californian agriculture and the tech industry. Particular attention will be paid to the H2A and H1B guest worker programs and their consequences for employers, employees and the industries more broadly. The workshop seeks to identify policies that benefit all stakeholders.  Register  Schedule8:45 am - 9:15 am       Registration, Coffee and Breakfast9:15 am - 9:30 am       Welcoming RemarksJohanna K. Schenner (Institute for Research on Labor and Employment)Jasmijn Slootjes (Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative)9:30 am - 10:30 am      Panel 1: The Tech Industry – the Employee's PerspectiveModerator: Andrew Moriarty (FWD.us)Commentator: Sameer Desai…

U.S. and State Estimates of Relative Teacher Pay with a Fun Discussion of CPS Data Issues

The recent surge in teacher strikes across the country brought to attention many issues that concern public education including class sizes that are too large, inadequate staffing of critical positions, crumbling building, outdated textbooks, and teacher pay. Allegretto has been tracking teacher pay and compensation for fifteen years. In this talk, she will present her most recent work on the teacher wage penalty with new state estimates. The talk will also touch on Current Population Survey concerns of top coded and allocated data and how they influence estimates. Sylvia Allegretto is the Co-Chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics.  

Million Dollar Hoods: Mapping the Fiscal and Human Cost of Mass Incarceration in Los Angeles

Los Angeles County operates the largest jail system in the United States, which incarcerates more people than any other nation on Earth. At a cost of nearly $1 billion annually, more than 20,000 people are caged every night in L.A.’s county jails and city lockups. But not every neighborhood is equally impacted by L.A.’s massive jail system. In fact, L.A.’s nearly billion-dollar jail budget is largely committed to incarcerating many people from just a few neighborhoods. In some communities, more than one-million dollars is spent annually on incarceration. These are L.A.’s Million Dollar Hoods.Led by Prof. Kelly Lytle Hernandez, the…

Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program Showcase

Please join us for our year-end IRLE-URAP Showcase, featuring UC Berkeley undergraduates who have been working with faculty mentors on research projects throughout the semester.This event provides students the platform to share their research, and our community to become inspired by their passion and hard work.Presentation schedule:11:00 am: Teresa Kabba (mentor Erin Kerrison): The Consequences of Ambiguous Policy: Exploring the Relationship between Definitions of Compliance and the Use of Force in the Stockton Police Department11:30 am: Tiger Tam and Stephanie Cong (mentor Yu-Ling Chang): Unemployment Insurance Modernization Provisions and Gender Difference in Benefit Receipt12:00 pm: Pizza and conversation: the future of IRLE's URAP program (training…

Multinational enforcement of labor law: Experimental evidence from Bangladesh’s apparel sector

Western stakeholders are increasingly demanding that multinationals sourcing from developing countries be accountable for labor rights and working conditions upstream in their supply chains. In response, many multinationals privately enforce labor standards in these countries, but the effects of their interventions on local firms and workers are unknown. I partnered with a set of multinational retail and apparel firms to enforce local labor laws on their suppliers in Bangladesh. I implemented a randomized controlled trial with 84 Bangladeshi garment factories, randomly enforcing a mandate for worker-manager safety committees in 41 supplier establishments. The intervention significantly improves compliance with the labor…

Author Talk – Scott L. Cummings on Blue and Green: The Drive for Justice at America’s Port

How an alliance of the labor and environmental movements used law as a tool to clean up the trucking industry at the nation’s largest port.In Blue and Green, Scott Cummings examines a campaign by the labor and environmental movements to transform trucking at America’s largest port in Los Angeles. Tracing the history of struggle in an industry at the epicenter of the global supply chain, Cummings shows how an unprecedented “blue-green” alliance mobilized to improve working conditions for low-income drivers and air quality in nearby communities. The campaign for “clean trucks,” Cummings argues, teaches much about how social movements can use…

The Effect of Political Power on Labor Market Inequality: Evidence from the 1965 Voting Rights Act (with Carlos Avenancio-Leon)

 A central concern for racial and ethnic minorities is having an equal opportunity to advance group interests via the political process. There remains limited empirical evidence, however, whether democratic policies designed to foster political equality are connected causally to social and economic equality. In this paper, we examine whether and how the expansion of minority voting rights contributes to advances in minorities’ economic interests. Specifically, we consider how the political re-enfranchisement of black Americans in the U.S. South, stemming from the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), contributed to improvements in their relative economic status during the 1960s…

Spring 2019 Visitors Workshop

Each year, IRLE hosts visiting scholars and visiting student researchers who come to Berkeley from all over the world to work on projects related to labor and employment. At this workshop, visitors will present research at various stages and receive feedback from their peers and the wider community. For more information on our visitors, please visit our Visiting Scholars page.Light refreshments will be provided. Please RSVP below to ensure we provide enough refreshments. Register  Schedule9:00 - 9:25 AMMaximiliaan Willem Pierre Thijssen, UNIVERSITY OF STRAVANGERTeacher Quality: Emotional Support and Classroom Climate9:25 - 9:50 AMCiprian Domnisoru, CARNEGIE MELLONThe Rise of For-Profit Colleges:…

Precarity Diverged: Social Capital, Occupational Attainment and Spatial Mobility of the Chinese Rural Migrants

Arguably the “precariat” of post-reform China, rural-to-urban migrants have long been seen as a unitary population highly unstable in both occupational and spatial terms. For decades, the precarity has been explained from the perspective of state and market: on the one hand, by the institutional exclusion under the Hukou Regime; on the other, by the low job security in the secondary labor market. Probing into their highly diverged career paths and migration outcomes, however, this research finds both the state and the market explanation inefficient and proposes a social explanation that emphasizes rural migrants’ active utilization of resources embedded in…

The Future of Work: Myth, Reality, and What We Should Do About It

Discussions about the future of work have focused on the idea that technology will soon reduce or alter the need for human labor in many occupations. Has this conventional narrative failed to focus on the key challenges facing workers today and in the future?Osterman will offer a perspective on these discussions, and how they relate to the need to address the challenge of a large—and seemingly persistent—low wage labor market. He will assess a range of strategies for addressing the challenge of low wages, and make the case for a greater focus on training and human capital approaches than has…

Inter-Firm Contracting and Wages: Concepts, Trends, and New Directions for Research

An important next step in understanding how firm strategies affect the quality of jobs and inequality in the US overall is to more systematically examine the reallocation of labor across organizations, as a result of firms’ or governments’ decisions to purchase goods and services from other firms. I refer to this process as domestic inter-firm contracting (IFC). My analysis shows that the definition of domestic IFC matters. Measuring domestic IFC by sector and by industry reveals important distinctions in trends and wage relationships, and raises questions and hypotheses for further research. About the Speaker:Jessie Halpern-Finnerty is a research and policy associate…

Inside the Black Box of Organizational Life: The Gendered Language of Performance Assessment

Do formal evaluation procedures really reduce bias? As an organizational practice, are they a smokescreen concealing bias or a great leveler that bolsters meritocracy?While organizations formalize evaluation procedures to help achieve meritocratic outcomes, they often fail to eliminate bias in practice. Managers play a key role in applying such procedures, but researchers have been unable to observe the thought processes guiding managers’ decisions. In this talk, Correll will allow us to peer into managers’ heads through an analysis of the language they use when evaluating employees’ performance. Using written performance reviews at a Fortune 500 technology company, Correll investigates whether…

Troubled Corporatism: Social Interventions in China’s Era of Public Procurement and Social Management

Against the background of the recent reconsolidation of authoritarianism, Peng will examine the re-emergence of corporatism, yet in a more marketized form, between the Chinese state and grassroots NGOs. Attempting to keep social unrests at bay with limited personnel and expertise, the Chinese local states seek to incorporate grassroots NGOs to establish social service programs that aims to improve the livelihood of marginalized populations, such as internal migrant workers; on the other hand, cut off from overseas funding and facing increasing political risks, NGOs collaborate with the state for resources and endorsement. In recent years, this collaborative relationship is established…

The Party’s Over: Former Communist Party Members in the Bay Area

Communist Party members were an important part of the Bay Area’s political left during the 1930s and early 1940s. The eventual decline and fall of the party profoundly affected these individuals and the region’s leftwing politics. Bob Cherny discusses these issues in his seminar appearance on Tuesday, March 19. Now Professor emeritus, Cherny taught American History at San Francisco State for more than forty years. Along with researching the life and times of labor leader Harry Bridges, he has published several important works, including Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art (2017).The session will be from 7-9:15 p.m. at the…

Is the Social Safety Net a Long-Term Investment? Large-Scale Evidence from the Food Stamps Program

After Social Security, the Food Stamp Program touches the lives of more American families than any other element of the social safety net. What is the impact of this program on the long-term outcomes of children who receive these resources early in life?Hoynes uses the rollout of the Food Stamp Program between 1961 and 1975 to examine the impact of an increase in economic resources during childhood on human capital, labor market outcomes, neighborhood, and mortality. Using novel large-scale data from the 2000 Census, American Community Survey, and Social Security Administration NUMIDENT, this research analyzes data on 43 million individuals.…

Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area

Room 370, Dwinelle Hall

Dr. Peter Cole discusses his highly anticipated book - Dockworker Power. Often missed in commentary on today's globalizing economy, workers in the world’s ports can harness their role, at a strategic choke point, to promote their labor rights and social justice causes. Cole brings such overlooked experiences to light in an eye-opening comparative study of Durban, South Africa, and the San Francisco Bay Area, California. Pathbreaking research reveals how unions effected lasting change in some of the most far-reaching struggles of modern times. First, dockworkers in each city drew on longstanding radical traditions to promote racial equality. Second, they persevered when…

The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon

When Steven Burd, CEO of the supermarket chain Safeway, cut wages and benefits, starting a five-month strike by 59,000 unionized workers, he was confident he would win. But where traditional labor action failed, a novel approach was more successful. With the aid of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, a $300 billion pension fund, workers led a shareholder revolt that unseated three of Burd’s boardroom allies.In The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon, David Webber uses cases such as Safeway’s to shine a light on labor’s most potent remaining weapon: its multi-trillion dollar pension funds. Outmaneuvered at the bargaining table…

From Coors to California: David Sickler and the New Working Class

Join us for a conversation with David Sickler, one of the most creative and successful union organizers in the country. Starting out working on an assembly line in Colorado’s Coors Brewery, Sickler went on to lead breakthrough campaigns that transformed the US labor movement and to become an influential labor advocate within Los Angeles City Hall.This book captures some of Sickler’s historic campaign victories, from his leadership of the national Coors Boycott to unprecedented organizing drives with immigrant workers, often in direct challenge to the leadership of US labor. The revitalization of the California labor movement is integrally linked to…

CA Studies Seminar Dinner: Honoring Labor From the Union Iron Works to the Salesforce Tower: From Black and White Film to Digital Images

San Francisco photographer Joe Blum was a boilermaker, ship fitter, and welder for more than twenty-five years.  He was also an activist in the Boilermakers Union.  Many of his photos are of iron workers and other craftspeople working on such big Bay Area projects as the Zampa Memorial Bridge over the Carquinez Straits, the new east span of the Bay Bridge, and the Salesforce Tower.  His work has been widely exhibited, including at the Berkeley Art Museum and San Francisco City Hall.  His photos are also included in the Bancroft Library collection.  Blum’s seminar presentation will combine historical images with…

Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital

In Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital (Harvard University Press), Clausing makes the argument that Americans, especially those with middle and lower incomes, face stark economic challenges due to rising income inequality and wage stagnation. But these problems do not require us to retreat from the global economy. On the contrary, an open economy overwhelmingly helps.International trade brings countries together by raising living standards, benefiting consumers, and making countries richer. Global capital mobility helps both borrowers and lenders. International business improves efficiency and fosters innovation. And immigration remains one of America’s greatest strengths, as newcomers play an essential role in…

Intersectional Histories, Overdetermined Fortunes: Understanding Mexican and US Domestic Worker Movements

What determines whether movements of informal workers succeed or fail? Using cases of domestic-worker movements in Mexico and the United States, Tilly seeks to  build upon the literature on social movements and intersectionality by adding historical analysis of the movements’ evolution through a cross-national analysis of movement differences.Historically, these two movements have been propelled by multiple streams of activism corresponding to shifting salient intersectional identities and frames, always including gender but incorporating other elements as well. Comparatively, the US domestic-worker movement recently has had greater success due to superior financial resources and greater political opportunities – advantages due in part precisely…

Are Local Minimum Wages Too High, and How Could We Even Know?

Can higher earnings be attributed to higher minimum wage policies, or industry responses to wage increases?Nadler’s research measures the effects of six citywide minimum wages that ranged up to $13 inChicago, the District of Columbia, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle, employing event study and synthetic control methods. Using aggregate data on average earnings and employment in the food services industry, this study finds significantly positive earnings increases and no significant employment losses. While such evidence suggests the policies accomplished the intent of increasing the earnings of low-wage workers, Nadler’s research also addresses the argument that the industry responds…

Immigration Policy in Japan and South Korea

Ethnic Studies Conference Room

Immigration policies drastically expanded in Japan and South Korea, but the reality migrant workers face in both countries are not as promising. The general resistance of unskilled immigration and the demands of labor shortages and shrinking populations have been accommodated with ad hoc governmental policies.Under the supervision of Professor Keiko Yamanaka, UC Berkeley undergraduate research apprentices Margaux, Maya and Eun Seo have been taking on research this Fall looking into the glaring contradictions between these governmental policies and working conditions. Margaux is interested in the new influx of low-skilled workers via the new TPI (Technical and Practical Interns) program, and…

Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program Showcase

Please join us for our year-end IRLE-URAP Showcase, featuring UC Berkeley undergraduates who have been working with faculty mentors on research projects throughout the semester.This event provides students the platform to share their research, and our community to become inspired by their passion and hard work.This semester we will have eleven students presenting on issues including policing, mass incarceration, undocumented student experience, early childhood education, immigration policies, unemployment insurance, and criminal background checks.We will serve pizza at 12 pm for those attending.<Please RSVP here: https://goo.gl/forms/swtsCclb3uhp9FAG3

Inequality in Life and Death: Policy and Prospect

Banatao Auditorium, UC Berkeley

Inequality has become a central focus of policy discussions, but inequality has multiple dimensions and correspondingly many potential policy interventions. This mini-conference will consider inequality from this broad perspective, with presentations by international experts on the Berkeley faculty and a keynote by Peter Orszag, Vice Chairman of Investment Banking and Global Co-Head of Healthcare at Lazard, former director of the Office of Management and Budget under the Obama Administration.Additional details and registration are found here.

The Effects of Compulsory Interest Arbitration on Disputes, Wages and Service Quality: Evidence From a Unique Natural Experiment in Canada

Interest arbitration is a tool sometimes used in union negotiations for public workers who don’t have the right to strike. Issues that can’t be resolved in the collective bargaining process are sent to an impartial arbitrator. The role of interest arbitration in public sector collective bargaining has recently been at the forefront of public administration concerns, largely due to fiscal challenges that emerged following the 2008 financial crisis. Many local/municipal and state/provincial governments across North America have been vocal in criticizing interest arbitration, arguing that arbitrators' awards are either a) out of line with what is bargained elsewhere and/or b)…

Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area

RSVP's are open for our next California Studies dinner, featuring Richard Walker, "Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Downside of Prosperity in the San Francisco bay Area".The high tech boom has been a bust for many Bay Area residents.  Seminar co-convener Dick Walker discusses this and other contradictions of recent Bay Area economic history in his important new book, “Pictures of a Gone City.”   Professor emeritus and former Geography Department chair at UC Berkeley, Walker is the author of several ground-breaking works, including “The Country in the City: The Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area” and “Conquest…

Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison

In his talk, Western will bear witness to the lives held captive in America’s experiment with mass incarceration. Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison tells the stories of the men and women he met through the Boston Reentry Study, a series of interviews his research team conducted with people leaving prison for neighborhoods around Boston. They were trying to understand what happens when people return to a community, and the challenges faced by them and their families. How did they look for work and housing? How did they manage their addictions or mental illness, and why did some return…

Race and Network in the Job Search Process

Racial disparities persist throughout the employment process, with African-Americans experiencing significant barriers compared to whites. This talk will help us gain a deeper understanding of racial labor market stratification by bringing new theoretical insights and original data to bear on the ways that social networks shape racial disparities in accessing employment opportunities.Existing scholarship points to two processes by which networks perpetuate racial inequality in the labor market: network access and network effects. In the first case, African Americans may receive fewer job leads through their social networks than whites, limiting their access to employment opportunities. In the second case, blacks…

CA Studies Seminar Dinner: Diane North

 Please come join us for our second California Studies Dinner featuring Diane North, Professor of History at the University of Maryland.  Her talk will be on her new book, "California at War: the State and the People During World War I".Scholars have produced many works on the impact of World War II on California, but until now the state’s experience in World War I has been largely ignored.  Diane North fills this void with her new book, a comprehensive social history of the state during the Great War.  Dr. North, a former member of the Cal Studies seminar, is Professor…

Impacts of minimum wages on single mothers

Using an event study framework, Godøy’s research documents a sharp rise in employment and earnings of single mothers after state minimum wage increases. Further, these effects can be shown to be concentrated among jobs that pay the minimum wage or slightly higher – high-wage employment remains unaffected. Panel models find the largest effects among mothers of preschool age children, while the effects on childless women are negligible. The results are consistent with a simple labor supply model in which single mothers of young children face large fixed costs of work in the form of childcare. Minimum wage increases then generate…

The Distributional Effects of Minimum Wages: Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data

Voorheis will discuss the implications of his research finding that minimum wage policies increase long-term earnings of low-wage workers, and possibly reasons for the persistence of those effects. Rising income inequality and stagnating economic mobility have prompted state and local governments to focus on higher minimum wages. As these policies expand, an understanding of how minimum wage increases affect earnings growth is critical. However, commonly used public datasets offer limited opportunities to evaluate this relationship. Using administrative earnings data from the Social Security Administration linked to the Current Population Survey, we gain valuable insight into how effects of the minimum…

Do Human Capital Decisions Respond to the Returns to Education? Evidence from DACA

Join us for the second talk of our research presentation series, featuring Elira Kuka. Kuka will be presenting her paper, "Do Human Capital Decisions Respond to the Returns to Education? Evidence from DACA", which studies the human capital responses to a large shock in the returns to education for undocumented youth.In her paper, Kuka obtains variation in the benefits of schooling from the enactment of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy in 2012, which provides work authorization and deferral from deportation for high school educated youth. By implementing a difference-in-differences design by comparing DACA eligible to non-eligible individuals over time,…

Graduate Student Summit For Diversity in Economics

The David Brower Center 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley

Registration  The field of economics touches upon all aspects of life- from an individual's consumption choice to global trends spanning countries. And yet, the economists who constitute this social science are not representative of the very society they study.This lack of diversity in the economics profession, relative to a diverse society, points to inefficiencies in the allocation of talent within the labor market. Compounding this inefficiency, is the missed opportunity for better research; diversity in researcher background leads to diversity in research topics and approaches.Women in Economics at Berkeley's Summit for Diversity in Economics will bring together graduate students and researchers…

Seeing Beyond the Trees: Using machine learning to estimate the impact of minimum wages on affected individuals

The majority of teens, the commonly studied group in the minimum wage literature, are minimum wage workers; yet most minimum wage workers are not teens. To overcome this discrepancy, Cengiz uses machine learning tools to construct two demographically-based groups according to the size of the bite of the minimum wage: a high impact group and a baseline group that contain 39.1% and 73.4% of all minimum wage workers. In his presentation, Cengiz will show that while there is a very clear increase in average wages of the groups when the minimum wage rises, there is no evidence of job destruction…

Labor in the Climate Transition: Charting the Roadmap for 2019 and Beyond

The David Brower Center 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley

 The UC Berkeley Labor Center is hosting a conference on September 12, 2018, at the David Brower Center in downtown Berkeley, immediately prior to the start of the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco.Reason for conference:California and the world must take major steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect our climate – but workers must be key beneficiaries also. The choice is clear: The green economy can produce good, family-supporting jobs with access for all, or it can worsen the overall economy’s yawning gap between the rich and low-wage gig workers.Our conference goals:Identify and showcase the best practices…

Pros and Cons of Designing a Job Guarantee Program

Policy makers frustrated with slack labor markets, diverging wage and productivity growth, and continued lag in the incomes of Black workers have increasingly begun to consider legislation that would guarantee everyone a job.The right to a job has been part of U.S. policy debates before. The preamble to the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, passed in 1978, vows to “translate into practical reality the right of all Americans who are able, willing, and seeking to work to full opportunity for useful paid employment at fair rates of compensation.” That intent clearly has not been actualized. When the Act was passed in…

IRLE Fall Open House Reception

Save the date for IRLE's annual fall reception, where you can meet new IRLE staff, visitors, and students and learn more about how IRLE supports students and faculty.

Seminar on Inclusive Economies for Cities and Regions

Register Introduced by Karen Chapple, City and Regional PlanningChris Benner, UC Santa Cruz: "Inclusive Economies: Conceptual, Measurement and Process Issues"Incorporating insights from ecological economics, theories of social well-being, and concepts of pro-poor and inclusive growth, this talk will discuss insights from the application of a five-dimensional framework for analyzing and promoting more inclusive economies originally developed by the Rockefeller Foundation. Defining an inclusive economy as one that is equitable, participatory, growing, sustainable and stable, this initiative developed specific indicators that can be used to analyze progress towards more inclusive economies along these five dimensions at national and sub-national levels.  Drawing on efforts…

Perceptions and Experiences of the Formerly Incarcerated with Fair Chance Employment Initiatives

In October of 2017, Governor Brown signed into law a statewide ban-the-box (BtB) policy, which went into effect January 1, 2018. How do policies like this one affect the perceptions and experiences of formerly incarcerated job seekers? Drawing from surveys of probationers, Sandra has investigated what the formerly incarcerated know about the California's BtB policies; their perceptions of the effectiveness of such policies at removing barriers to their employment; how BtB affects their own patterns of job search; and how race, class, and gender inform the perceptions the formerly incarcerated have and the experiences they describe.This event is open to…

Increasing Cal Grant Take Up Through Improved Communications; Administrative Data Linking

Each year, the California Student Aid Commission awards Cal Grants - college funds that don't need to be paid back - to eligible California students. How can we get more students to take advantage of them? The California Policy Lab is testing whether letters designed with simplicity and behavioral nudges can increase the rates at which eligible students take up Cal Grants.Plus, a discussion of CPL's ongoing use of administrative data - the challenges of matching individual records across administrative data sets, and CPL's experience linking data from one California county.This event is open to UC Berkeley affiliates only. We…

Rebel Lawyer: Wayne Collins and the Defense of Japanese American Rights

Fred Korematsu, Iva Toguri (alias Tokyo Rose), Japanese Peruvians, and five thousand Americans who renounced their citizenship under duress: Chuck Wollenberg's new book Rebel Lawyer tells the story of the key cases pertaining to the World War II incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry and the trial attorney who defended them. Wayne Collins made a somewhat unlikely hero. An Irish American lawyer with a volatile temper, Collins's passionate commitment to the nation's constitutional principles put him in opposition to not only the United States government but also groups that acquiesced to internment, such as the national office of the ACLU…

Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area is currently the jewel in the crown of capitalism—the tech capital of the world and a gusher of wealth from the Silicon Gold Rush. It has been generating jobs, spawning new innovation, and spreading ideas that are changing lives everywhere. It boasts of being the Left Coast, the Greenest City, and the best place for workers in the USA. So what could be wrong? It may seem that the Bay Area has the best of it in Trump’s America, but there is a dark side of success: overheated bubbles and spectacular crashes; exploding inequality and…

Reflections on the End of the Safety Net as We Know It

Banatao Auditorium at UC Berkeley

It’s been over fifty years since President Johnson declared war on poverty, and each year, our federal and state governments spend billions of dollars trying to alleviate it. So why are some 45.3 million Americans still living below the poverty line? Why is there still no consensus on what can be done to reduce poverty? And why does “poverty won the war” (Ronald Reagan, 1986) remain a political mantra?In this talk, Dr. Danziger will review the economic trends that have increased poverty and the safety net programs that have reduced it. He’ll also highlight recommendations from a recent bipartisan report…

The Vietnam War in Mexican America

More than 200,000 Mexican Americans served in Vietnam. How did the war impact the Chicano community, and how do those effects linger today? Tomás Summers Sandoval has explored this question through oral histories of Chicano veterans and community members. He'll discuss his findings, which will be published in a forthcoming book and incorporated into a dramatic performance piece.This event is organized by the California Studies Association and co-sponsored by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and the Townsend Center for the Humanities.RSVP for free dinner Tomás F. Summers Sandoval is a professor of history and Chicana/o-Latina/o studies at Pomona College,…

Politics At Work: How Companies Turn Their Workers into Lobbyists

In 2010, the landmark Citizens United Supreme Court decision upheld corporations’ right to participate in politics, declaring that limits to their political spending would infringe on freedom of speech. But money is not the only political resource that corporations can use. Private companies have access to – and control over – powerful human capital in the form of their employees. Professor Hertel-Fernandez will discuss his new book, Politics at Work, and the huge impacts corporations are having on elections and public policy by mobilizing their workers.The discussion will be moderated by Kim Voss of the UC Berkeley Sociology Department and Ann…

Hard Work Is Not Enough: Gender and Racial Inequality in an Urban Workspace

In this talk, Professor Davis will discuss African American women’s experiences as bus operators in a San Francisco Bay Area transit firm from 1974-1989, during the height of affirmative action hiring. Through a series of interviews with these transit operators alongside correspondence between management and union leaders, grievance and arbitration data, as well as litigation against the firm, she traces the gradual demise of job security within this SF Bay Area transit company that once led the nation in offering its transit operators good wages and benefits. The findings suggest that transit operating became increasingly stressful throughout the period of…

Jobs for Freedom/1400 Jobs Campaign

Come learn about the campaign led by the Bay Area Black Worker Center and Justice Reinvestment Coalition that resulted in the Alameda County Re-Entry Hiring Program. The program aims to place Alameda county residents with felony convictions into county jobs. After decades of funding job training programs with abysmal outcomes for placing people into permanent employment, this program is poised to make a difference. Find out more about the model and lessons learned.Danielle Mahones is a facilitator and trainer with the UC Berkeley Labor Center's National Black Worker Center Project. For nine years she served as the executive director of the Center…

IRLE Photo Exhibit and Spring Reception

Come join us for an afternoon of art and celebration as we show off the Institute's new lobby and conference rooms! As part of our recently completed renovations, we are unveiling a mini-exhibit of rare photographs of the 1946 Oakland General Strike, displayed at the Oakland Museum of California in 1996 and 1997. Also on view will be labor photos by David Bacon and protest photos by the Labor Center's own Annette Bernhardt. We will also take the afternoon to celebrate a year of renovations and transitions, and kick off another great year at the Institute. RSVPs will help us plan food. RSVP

From Braceros to H2-As: Discussing the History, Present, and Future of Agricultural Guestworker Programs

National Steinbeck Center

In partnership with UC Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and the Center for Latino Policy Research, the National Steinbeck Center is proud to present “From Braceros to H-2A’s: Discussing the History, Present, and Future of Agricultural Guest Worker Programs in California” as part of our Ag Forum series. The program will take place on Friday, March 16 from 9 AM- 1 PM and is admission free.The program aims to bring together leading scholars, journalists, and students on the Bracero Program with leaders in the agricultural industry, and elected officials. The group will discuss the legacies of the…

Workshop: Employment Issues in Agriculture

This event is made possible by funding from the Berkeley Food Institute,the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, the UC Berkeley School of Law, the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Department, the UC Berkeley Sociology Department, and the UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management.Please register to secure your spot. Register Program12:30 pm Registration1 pm Welcome1:15 pm Panel 1: WagesJulie A. Su, Labor Commissioner of California2:15 pm Break2:30 pm Panel 2: DiscriminationNelson Chan, Department of Fair Employment and HousingCatherine Fisk, UC Berkeley School of Law3:30 pm: Break3:45 pm: Panel 3: LaborDave Runsten, Community Alliance with Family FarmsChristy Getz, Berkeley Food Institute4:45 pm: Conclusion SpeakersCatherine Fisk is the…

Regulating the Human Supply Chain

It’s no secret that recruiting guest workers can be a shady business. Often, the fraud and extortion that guest workers face are blamed on a few bad apple recruiters, who are targeted by criminal regulation that almost never works. But the problems are bigger than bad apples. Structural forces encourage abuse, from the subcontracting common in guest worker recruitment schemes to cost pressures from global competition.The process is best understood as a human supply chain, into which low wage workers are often fed. Reframing labor migration in this way helps us integrate it into our ideas of global supply networks.…

Working Together: How the Supreme Court divided the civil rights movement and labor leaders

Once, activists dreamed of an all-inclusive movement for poor people. But then came the 1950s – labor began to decline as a social movement, and civil rights leaders turned away from their early focus on labor rights. What role did the courts play in pushing these movements apart?Professor Fisk finds that the era’s labor laws, which were hostile to picketing by labor organizers, encouraged civil rights advocates to distance themselves from labor movements. When the Supreme Court finally granted First Amendment protection to civil rights picketing that it had long denied to labor picketing, that decision cemented a divide between…

Measuring Economic Performance as Well-Being (and Not Only Income)

Although economists agree that Gross National Product is not a measure of social welfare, they don't agree on what broader measure to use. Professor Clair Brown will present an overview of the four major types of measures of economic performance, with the pros and cons of each. Then, with grad student Eli Lazarus, she will present their estimation of the Genuine Progress Indicator for California, 2010-2014 (paper submitted to Ecological Indicators).This seminar is based on Chapter 6, Buddhist Economics: an enlightened approach to the dismal science (Bloomsbury Press, 2017).IRLE Staff Research Presentations are open to UC Berkeley affiliates only. If you are a…

In a Field of Patriarchy: Gender Politics and Freedom Dreams During the United Farm Worker Movement

Absent in farmworker historiographies are the voices of farmworker women who speak of patriarchal and racialized exploitation in post World War II California. For many, patriarchal power originated in domestic violence, strict gender roles and autonomy-denying social conditions. Using original oral interviews, this presentation foregrounds the patriarchal relations within the Mexican farmworker community, and traces its implications for the historiography on farmworker unionization in the 1960s and 1970s. More specifically, it argues for a direct confrontation with Mexican patriarchy so as to trace the racialized, gendered and classed power relations in California’s agricultural countryside. It further argues that only by…

Author Talk: Richard Reeves on America’s Dream Hoarders

Banatao Auditorium at UC Berkeley

We know about the one percent. The ultra-rich. The billionnaire class. But author Richard Reeves writes it’s the upper middle class that matters most. Those top twenty percent of earners are becoming more effective at passing wealth to their children, and – through zoning laws, schooling, occupational licensing, college application procedures, and the allocation of internships – more effective at keeping others from getting it. In his new book, Dream Hoarders: How the American Middle Class is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That is a Problem, and What to Do About It, Richard Reeves argues that we can…

Coastal Sage: Peter Douglas and the Fight to Save California’s Shore

California is home to 1,100 miles of uninterrupted coastline, defined by long stretches of beach and jagged rocky cliffs. It's easy to take our shore for granted - but its protections are hard-won.Thomas Osborne will discuss his new book, Coastal Sage, which chronicles the career and accomplishments of PeterDouglas, the longest-serving executive director of the California Coastal Commission. For nearly three decades,Douglas fought to keep the California coast public, to prevent overdevelopment, and to safeguard habitat. He emerged from these battles as a leading figure in the contemporary American environmental movement. Douglas influenced public conservation efforts across the country, and he coauthored California’s foundational laws on shoreline management…

CWED: A Symposium to Celebrate a Decade of Important Minimum Wage Research

It has been ten years since the creation of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics (CWED), housed in the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE). Since then, CWED has become well-known for its trailblazing academic and policy research on a number of important economic issues, including the effects of the Great Recession, public sector workers, low-wage labor markets and, most notably, minimum and subminimum wage impacts. To mark the occasion, IRLE and CWED are organizing a one-day symposium, CWED: Celebrating a Decade of Important Policy Research. The symposium will chronicle CWED’s beginnings; highlight its most influential employment…

Does California Fly Data-Blind?

The California Policy Lab, launched in January 2017, is committed to improving the lives of Californians through data-driven policy. Come learn about how the lab began and what progress we've made in our inaugural year. We'll talk about our current research projects and our vision for using administrative data to generate transformative evidence for the nation's largest and most important state. Jesse Rothstein is a professor of public policy and economics at UC Berkeley, and director (on sabbatical 2017-18) of the IRLE. His research focuses on labor economics, tax policy, and educational outcomes. He is the faculty director of the California Policy Lab.  Evan…

Asian American Settlements and Suburban Development in Post-World War II Los Angeles

Details forthcoming.Please RSVP to this free event.Co-sponsored by the California Studies Association and the Townsend Center for the HumanitiesThis talk is part of the California Studies Dinners series, a forum for the discussion of California politics, economy, and society that meets once a month on the Berkeley campus. It brings together scholars, students, and specialists from around the Bay Area to hear speakers talk about new books, research and ideas of note concerning California. The series has been going strong for twenty years (with a predecessor going back thirty years!), and is the finest intellectual forum on California history, geography and public affairs in…

Precarity and Dependence in the “Sharing” Economy

The sharing economy debuted to grand claims about its ability to change the world for the good--it would encourage social connection, use assets more efficiently, and be better for the environment. For earners on platforms, it promised flexibility, freedom and the ability to become a "micro-entrepreneur." Ten years in, the reality is far more complex. In this talk, Schor discusses her interview-based research with workers on six platforms, and argues that contrary to the expectations of both boosters and critics, outcomes are highly diverse, and depend to a large extent on workers' non-platform economic situations. The discussion will be moderated…

Breaking the Cycle: Improving Outcomes for California’s High Need, High Cost Population

The David Brower Center 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley

A slim slice of California’s citizens use the majority of government services.  At hospitals, jails, and homeless shelters across the state, we see familiar faces again and again.  Many of these people suffer from mental health, substance abuse, or persistent health conditions. Are we serving their needs effectively, efficiently, and equitably?Several cities and counties around the state – from San Diego to Humboldt – are seeking to identify and address these “frequent utilizers.”  Some of these efforts are focused specifically on health-care utilization and Whole Person Care.  Other efforts are trying to reduce frequent contacts with law enforcement by testing…

Author Talk – The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Rick Wartzman’s new book, The End of Loyalty, details the erosion of the social contract between corporations and employees since World War II, the decline of American labor and the current rise of populism in the United States.Wartzman follows four corporate giants – General Electric, General Motors, Kodak, and Coca-Cola – through the twentieth century’s booms and busts, examining the changing relationships between employers and employees and how much has been lost: job security and steadily rising pay, guaranteed pensions, robust health benefits, and much more."The End of Loyalty is the rich story of how the corporate…

The Future of Work

IRLE Library Commons

The gig economy has radically changed the way we think about work. The concern is that workers increasingly do not have employers anymore and are facing lower wages, no access to health and pension benefits, exclusion from safety-net programs, and chronic instability in their incomes and work lives. What does gig work mean for the future of working people? And how can policymakers respond?Please RSVP here.  Annette Bernhardt directs the Low-Wage Work Program at IRLE’s Labor Center. She focuses on domestic outsourcing, the gig economy, and the impact of new technologies on low-wage work.

Gold Rush Stories: Seekers, Scoundrels, Loss, and Luck

In less than ten years in the nineteenth century, more than 300,000 people made the journey to California, some from as far away as Chile and China. Dreamers and eccentrics, they included the first African American judge, an early feminist, and a self-styled emperor. Historian Gary Noy's new book, Gold Rush Stories: 49 Tales of Seekers, Scoundrels, Loss, and Luck, explores the human stories behind the California Gold Rush generation. These individuals brought social tumult and environmental degradation, and their stories reveal the true complexities of the Gold Rush,Please RSVP for this free event.Co-sponsored by the California Studies Association and the Townsend Center for…

Beyond “Resistance”: A Bold Plan for Work With Dignity via a Federal Job Guarantee

NEW LOCATION: 2521 Channing Way, IRLE Director's RoomIn 2017, Liberals in the United States are calling for “resistance” to regressive policies. Grassroots movements like the Fight for $15 show a desire for an offensive strategy on the left, but Professor Hamilton suggests that they do not go far enough. Raising the minimum wage still leaves many workers unemployed or out of the workforce altogether, especially those stigmatized by race, disability, or having been formerly incarcerated.Instead, Professor Hamilton and his colleagues propose a bold federal job guarantee, providing economic security and decent wages for every American. The discussion will be moderated…