By UCLA IRLE Newsroom

Tobias Higbie – professor of labor studies and history and former associate director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE)  –  has been appointed as the institute’s new director as of September 1, 2022.

Higbie succeeds Abel Valenzuela Jr., who was appointed as interim dean of the division of social sciences in the UCLA College.

“I am thrilled to appoint Professor Tobias Higbie as IRLE’s next director,” said Valenzuela. “For the past six years, we have worked closely to build and enhance the labor studies interdepartmental program and increase student and faculty engagement with research focused on Los Angeles, work and workers.”

Higbie has been a longtime leader at IRLE and has served as the institute’s associate director since 2009. He led the effort to launch UCLA’s labor studies interdepartmental degree program – the first in the UC system to offer a bachelor’s of arts in labor studies – and was the program’s chair from 2019 to 2022. Prior to the launch of the major, he served as chair of the UCLA Labor and Workplace Studies program for the academic minor from 2014 to 2019.

Before coming to UCLA in 2007, Higbie was an assistant professor in the Institute for Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois from 2005 to 2007 and the director of the Center for Family and Community History at the Newberry Library from 2000 to 2005.

As a labor historian, Higbie has led research efforts that sit at the intersection of work, migration and social movement organizing in the United States. He is the author of Labor’s Mind: an Intellectual History of the Working Class and the award-winning Indispensable Outcasts: Hobo Workers and Community in the American Midwest, 1880-1930, illuminating the history and issues affecting working-class communities and migrant workers.

“I am confident that with Tobias’ leadership, the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment will continue its groundbreaking work linking UCLA with our students, faculty and research to move Los Angeles forward and change the world,” said Valenzuela.

By UCLA IRLE Newsroom

New California budget also sets aside $15 million for renovations. It’s been big news for the UCLA Labor Center. The historic building that houses the UCLA Labor Center will be named in honor the Rev. James Lawson Jr., a a civil rights and workers’ rights leader who worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr., and the 2021-22 California budget includes $15 million to renovate the building that overlooks MacArthur Park.

UCLA has leased this building since 2002 and purchased the building in November 2020. This one-time allocation will fund necessary renovations for the building and establish a permanent home for the center, which has provided a base for low-wage worker research, innovative labor projects, and community-engaged learning and leadership development for hundreds of UCLA students.

Lawson has taught a labor studies course on nonviolence at UCLA for the past twenty years. In 2018, Lawson received the UCLA Medal, the campus’s highest honor.

The UCLA Labor Center was established in 1964 as the Center for Labor Research and Education within the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations, now the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, through a statewide joint labor-university committee. Since its inception, the center has been dedicated to research, education, and service in the interest of California’s workers.

“We wanted to bridge the gap between the university and the labor movement, worker centers, and community-based social justice organizations,” said Kent Wong, director at the UCLA Labor Center. “We’re located in the most immigrant-dense zip code in the country and in direct proximity to the communities served by our research and programs.”

Read the full news release about the funding for the labor center on the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment website.

“Los Angeles is the harbinger for the future. It’s a city that has driven the national debate on workforce issues such as the minimum wage, wage theft, youth employment and immigration. These key issues are shaping the conversation about the future of work nationwide.”

So says Abel Valenzuela, director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Valenzuela is an expert on day laborers, immigration and labor markets, urban poverty and inequality, and immigrant settlement patterns. His work focuses on understanding the social position and impact of immigrants in the United States, especially in Los Angeles.

Valenzuela, who serves as special advisor to the chancellor on immigration policy and is a professor in the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies in the UCLA College, has studied how different groups of workers compete for low-wage, low-skill jobs; the local economic and employment impacts of immigration; and job search and commuting behavior among racial and ethnic groups in Los Angeles.

Since its founding in 1945, the Institute has played an important role in the intellectual life of the university and in the national conversation on labor and employment issues. It forms wide-ranging research agendas on issues impacting workers on the margins including immigrant workers, Black workers, gig workers, young workers and domestic workers. The Institute’s studies have advanced policy changes related to the minimum wage, wage theft, and paid sick leave. Last fall, the Institute launched the labor studies major, the first of its kind at the University of California.

As local and national economies grapple with the unprecedented impacts of COVID-19, the Institute’s research will be critical to rebuilding a more racially equitable economy that prioritizes the most vulnerable workers.

Says Valenzuela, “UCLA is in the business of discovery and science and using that science to make change. My colleagues who study the impacts and intervention related to cancer are serious about finding a cure for cancer. In that same spirit, at the Institute we use social science to ensure workers live dignified lives and are able to support their families.”