Informing debates in the post-Trump era, this collection brings together key movement leaders and academics to share cutting-edge approaches to the urgent issues facing the immigrant community, along with fresh solutions to vexing questions of so- called "future flows" that have bedeviled policymakers for decades. The book also explores the contributions of immigrants to the nation’s identity, its economy, and progressive movements for social change.
2021 The New Press
2020 Polity Books
This timely book argues that immigration is not the cause of growing labor prearity and economic inequality, as the right-wing populist immigrant threat narrative claims. Rather, the low-wage immigrant influx since the 1970s was the consequence of concerted employer efforts to weaken labor unions, along with public policies fostering outsourcing, deregulation, and soaring inequality.
Available on Kindle
2016 University of Illinois Press
An edited volume that includes eleven chapters on gender and labor, spanning four decades of research on the topic. Topics include women in the Great Depression and World War II, and more recent shifts in women's employment. A key theme is the increase in class divisions among women in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, even as gender inequalities have narrowed. The final chapter compares the impact of the Great Depression and the Great Recession on women workers.
2013 Cornell University Press
This study documents the history and impact of California's paid family leave program, the first of its kind in the United States, which began operating in 2004. Drawing on original data from fieldwork and surveys of employers, workers, and the larger California population, this book analyzes the effects of the state’s paid leave program on employers and workers. It also explores the implications of California’s decade-long experience with paid family leave for the ongoing national debate about work-family policies.
2014 Russell Sage Foundation
An edited volume with eleven in-depth chapters, each exploring
an innovative policy intervention or strategy to address the rapid growth of low-wage work in the 21st century U.S. Chapter topics include living and minimum wage laws, training programs, paid family leave, unionization, the Affordable Care Act, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and workplace standards for immigrants - with a focus on their effectiveness in improving the pay, benefits and working conditions of those at the bottom of the labor market.
2010 Cornell University Press
An edited volume featuring 11 case studies of innovative low-wage worker organizing and advocacy campaigns in Los Angeles, many of which focus on immigrant workers. The book makes the case for a distinct L.A. model of labor organizing, rooting in mutual learning between unions and worker centers.
This collection of studies of union revitalization efforts includes a variety of perspectives on the challenges face the U.S. labor movement at the start of the 21st century. The chapters were first presented at a 2001 conference sponsored by the UC Institute for Labor and Employment, which Ruth Milkman then directed.
2004 Cornell University Press
2014 Cornell University Press
2006 Russell Sage Foundation
An edited volume featuring 13 case studies of worker center and union organizing among precarious workers in New York City, including taxi drivers, street vendors, and domestic workers and middle-strata freelancers, all of whom are excluded from basic employment laws; as well as retail and restaurant workers. The book offers a richly detailed portrait of the new labor movement in New York City, as well as recent efforts to expand that movement to the national level.
A study of the L.A. labor movement in the 20th century that analyzes the city's recent wave of Latino immigrant union organizing in historical perspective. The arguement is that L.A.'s labor movement, once considered a backwater dominated by AFL unions, developed a comparative advantage relative to other parts of the U.S. in the late 20th century, becoming the nation's leading site of immigrant unionism.
1997 University of California Press
A study of the former Linden, New Jersey General Motors plant, based on fieldwork conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The book analyzes the post-GM employment trajectories of workers who accepted a buyout from the company, few of whom had any regrets, as well as the impact of new technology on the workers who chose to remain at GM.
This book includes both analytic overviews and pioneering case studies of immigrant labor union organizing in a variety of industries - including hotels, janitorial work, construction and manufacturing - in northern and southern California. The chapters were first presented at a 1998 conference held at UCLA.
2000 Cornell University Press
Winner of the 1987 Joan Kelly Memorial Prize from the American Historical Association, this book theorizes the process of job segregation by sex through a study of U.S. women's labor history. It compares gender divisions of labor in the electrical manufacturing and auto industries in the 20th century, analyzing the impact of the Great Depression, World War II and the rise of industrial unionism.
1987 University of Illinois Press
1991 UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations
A study of Japanese-owned factories in California, based on site visits and interviews with managers about their labor policies and practices. Contrary to then conventional wisdom, these Japanese companies mostly adopted "American" rather than "Japanese" practices, including union avoidance. Few used job rotation, teamwork or other participatory schemes that the same companies had in Japan.
This book is out of print but used copies are often available online.
Or download it here.
A collection of articles on 20th century women's labor history published when this was still a new field of feminist scholarship. It includes case studies of labor organizing among garment workers, clerical workers, and public sector workers, as well as analyses of community-based labor protests led by women in the South and West.
This book is out of print but used copies are often available online.
Or download it here.
1985 Routledge and Kegan Paul