October 2007 (23)

Editor: Terence K. Huwe
Contributors: Dan Bellm, Elizabeth del Rocio Camacho, Stefanie Kalmin, Janice Kimball, Jenifer MacGillvary, Vibhuti Mehra, Dick Walker


IRLE News & Events
IRLE Invites the Public to a Major Symposium on October 27th to Honor Lloyd Ulman
LERF Grants Competition: Submission Deadline is October 22nd
IRLE Fall Colloquium Series: October Events
Labor Economist Richard B. Freeman presents the Jefferson Lecture on October 30th
2007-2008 Faculty Research Support Grants
Recent Sponsored Research
The Interdisciplinary Immigration Workshop Starts its Fifth Year
New Employees at IRLE
Richard Walker interviewed in the Berkeleyan
Heather Haveman Receives Major National Science Foundation Grant


IRLE Program News
The Labor Center
California Public Employee Relations
Center for the Study of Child Care Employment
IRLE Library
The Labor Project for Working Families


Campus News & Events
Economics Department
Goldman School of Public Policy
School of Social Welfare

IRLE NEWS & EVENTS

IRLE Invites the Public to a Major Symposium on October 27th to Honor Lloyd Ulman

Saturday, October 27, 2007, 8:30am - 6pm

This major event will celebrate Lloyd’s distinguished career, and will attract leading scholars from around the globe. The program is open to the public (space allowing).

Full Program
Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, UC Berkeley
Library Commons
2521 Channing Way, #5555
Berkeley, CA 94720-5555
Further Information: Myra Armstrong, zulu2@berkeley.edu

LERF Grants Competition: Submission Deadline is October 22nd

The UC Labor and Employment Research Fund has announced its Request for Proposals, and the deadline is October 22. All necessary information including eligibility and guidelines may be found on the IRLE Web at the following URL, under 2007-2008 Request for Proposals.

Further LERF RFP Information: http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/research/

IRLE Fall Colloquium Series: October Events

Monday, October 8, 2007 –12pm
"Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders"
Arin Dube, William Lester, Michael Reich, IRLE, UC Berkeley

Monday, October 15, 2007 –12pm
"Enforcement and Compliance with Labor Regulations"
Lucas Ronconi, Postdoctoral Researcher, CLRE, UC Berkeley

Saturday, October 27, 2007 –8:30am–6:00pm
SPECIAL EVENT "New Labor Market Institutions and the Public Policy Response: A Symposium to Honor Lloyd Ulman"

Tuesday, October 30, 2007 –4:10pm
Barrows Hall, Lipman Room/Jefferson Memorial Lecture
Richard Freeman, Director, Labor Studies Program, National Bureau of Economic Research

TO ATTEND PLEASE R.S.V.P. Myra Armstrong, zulu2@berkeley.edu

Labor Economist Richard B. Freeman presents the Jefferson Lecture on October 30th

Richard B. Freeman, Herbert S. Ascherman Professor of Economics at Harvard, will present the 2007 Jefferson Lecture. Information on the event and the Jefferson Memorial Fund follow below.

"The Challenge of Inequality and Global Capitalism to U.S. Democracy"
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 – 4:10 p.m.
Lipman Room, 8th floor Barrows Hall

Richard B. Freeman holds the Herbert S. Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University. In addition, he serves as Labor Studies Program Director at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Senior Research Fellow in Labour Markets at the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics. His research interests include the growth and decline of unions; self-organizing non-unions in the labor market; restructuring European welfare states; international labor standards; globalization; income distribution and equity in the marketplace; immigration and trade; and the job market for scientists and engineers.

About the Jefferson Memorial Fund

In 1944, the Jefferson Memorial Fund was established by the will of Elizabeth Bonestell in her name and the name of her husband, Cutler L. Bonestell, for the study and promotion of a loyal and enlightened adherence by young people to the basic principles of American democracy as embodied in the Constitution.

The fund supports an annual series of lectures on topics concerned with Jefferson or his times, with the development of the American governmental system, or with civil liberties and the Jeffersonian tradition.

Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, Senator Alan Simpson, Representative Thomas Foley, Walter LaFeber, and Archibald Cox have delivered Jefferson Memorial Lectures on early American history, on Jefferson himself, and on American institutions and policies in politics, economics, education, and law.

2007-2008 Faculty Research Support Grants

The following faculty members are receiving research support from IRLE during the 2007-08 academic year:

Cameron Anderson (Haas)
Encouraging Employee Voice Through Leadership Style

Irene Bloemraad (Sociology)
Interdisciplinary Immigration Workshop

Clair Brown (Economics)
Globalization and Economic Insecurity

Michael Burawoy (Sociology)
New Orleans After Katrina: the Labor of Reconstruction and the Reconstruction of Labor

Karen Chapple (City and Regional Planning)
Industrial Land Supply in California

David Collier (Political Science)
Labor Relations in the New, Decentralized Brazilian Automotive Industry

Ruth Collier (Political Science)
Revisiting Class Politics: Comparing Vote Cohesion between the Working Class and upper Sectors in Europe and Latin America

William Dow (Health Economics)/Arin Dube (IRLE)
Employer-Level Effects of An Employer Heath Spending Mandate

Hillary Elfenbein (Haas)
Professional Networks and Emotional Similarity

Neil Fligstein (Sociology)
The Determinants of Executive Compensation, 1982-2005

Sylvia Guendelman (Public Health)
Balancing Work and Family: The Relationship Between Pre and Postpartum Maternity Leave Arrangements and Breastfeeding

Heather Haveman (Sociology)
The Evolving Structure of Jobs in the U.S. Wine Industry

Gillian Lester (Law)
Employment law Treatise and the Rise of Apprenticeship

David Levine (Haas)
A Rigorous Impact Evaluation of Business Advisory Services to SME's

Charlan Nemeth (Psychology)
Fostering Creativity in Groups

Jeffrey Perloff (Agricultural and Resource Economics)
The Effect of 9/11 on Agricultural Labor Markets

Richard Scheffler (Public Health)
Berkeley Conference on Global Heath Workforce

Lloyd Ulman (Haas)
Fourth Germany U.S. Trade Union Conference

Kim Voss (Sociology)
1) The Varying Meanings of Social Movement Unionism Across the Globe
2) The Immigration Protests of 2006: Lessons Learned, Future Trajectories
3) Rethinking Union Democracy

Richard Walker (Geography)
Living New Deal

Nicholas Ziegler (Political Science)
Comparative Corporate Governance; Incentives, Complementarities, and Capabilities

Recent Sponsored Research Activity

Steve Pitts, CLRE Specialist
Rosenberg Foundation

Collaboration with Professor William Spriggs at Howard University. Researching the Black workers job crisis in the U.S. Will enable civil rights policy activists on the local and national level to understand the relevant issues and advocate for appropriate policy responses.

Marcy Whitebook, CSCCE Director
Cornerstone for Kids

This grant will support CSCCE's bringing together of stakeholders and plotting/implementing strategies for raising Early Childhood Educators’ compensation.

The Interdisciplinary Immigration Workshop Starts its Fifth Year

The Interdisciplinary Immigration Workshop is going into its 5th year as a forum where Berkeley-affiliated scholars of migration and immigrant integration can present their work-in-progress and receive intense, personalized feedback on their research projects.

The Workshop was established in September 2003 by Professor Irene Bloemraad (Sociology), who continues to serve as the Workshop’s faculty sponsor, and is funded by IRLE. The Workshop meets every two weeks and also serves as a venue for the dissemination (through its listserv) of immigration-related information and welcomes guest speakers to share their immigration research with workshop members and interested community members.

During the fall 2007 semester, a total of eleven graduate students from various disciplines will present their research. Additionally, Professor Tomás Jiménez (Sociology, UC-San Diego) will join the Workshop on Friday, September 28 to discuss how Mexican immigration influences the assimilation of established, long-standing Mexican Americans. On October 26, Professor Ron Hayduk (Political Science, CUNY-Manhattan Borough) will give a talk on immigrant voting rights in the U.S.

In March 2008, the Workshop will organize the 3rd "Spotlight on Immigration" conference, with Peggy Levitt (Sociology, Wellesley College) as the keynote speaker. For more information about the Interdisciplinary Immigration Workshop or to join the listserv, please contact one of the two workshop coordinators - Shannon Gleeson (sgleeson.berkeley.edu) or Els de Graauw (degraauw@berkeley.edu).

IRLE Welcomes New Staff

Over the past several months IRLE has recruited several new employees. We list them here and welcome them to the IRLE community–both the most recent, and the relative "old hands" who were hired some months ago.

The Labor Center

Andrea Buffa, Communications Analyst
Caitlin Healey, Program Assistant
Sandra Laughlin, Database Assistant
Karen Orlando, Associate Specialist
Korey Capozza, Principle Analyst

Center for Work and Employment Dynamics (CWED)

Ethan Kaplan, Visiting Scholar/Visiting Assistant Researcher
Sylvia Allegretto, Associate. Research Economist

Center for the Study of Child Care Employment

Esther Suarez-Burton, Staff Research Associate

Richard Walker interviewed in the Berkeleyan

Professor Richard Walker, Chair of the IRLE-California Studies Center, was interviewed by the Berkeleyan on September 19. This in-depth interview was conducted by Joan Hamilton, past Editor in Chief of the Sierra Club’s magazine, Sierra. The interview covers Dick’s latest book, The City in the Country (University of Washington Press) and also presents an incisive overview of the many broad issues confronting urban and regional planners.

Read the story at: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2007/09/19_walker.shtml

Heather Haveman Receives National Science Foundation Funding

Heather Haveman (Sociology) has just learned that her major study of magazines and their impact on American society has been funded by the National Science Foundation. IRLE wishes to congratulate Heather on this major grant award. A summary of her work follows below.

Media and Community in America, 1741-1860

Broadcast media are particularly powerful organizations. By transmitting facts, opinions, and entertainment, broadcast media connect geographically dispersed individuals into cohesive communities. Among broadcast media, social scientists have paid a great deal of attention to newspapers and books, but far less to magazines, which are worthy of greater attention. Compared to newspapers, magazines’ contents are quite varied and they are distributed more widely. And unlike books, magazines are serial publications, which allows them to interact dynamically with their readers. In combination, magazines’ diverse contents, broad geographic reach, and serial nature endows them with the power to influence many aspects of social life.

This research will explain how the American magazine industry evolved over the 120 years after its inception in 1741 ¬ not only in terms of numbers and size, but also in terms of variety, location, and influence. It will also explore how magazines helped build a coherent, distinctively American society and, at the same time, helped sustain many separate and often opposing communities. The project will make three contributions to our understanding of American society and the organizations that are integral to it: (1) trace the evolving diversity of magazines and reveal the interplay between forces driving variation and forces driving similarity; (2) connect the evolution of magazines to their historical context, thus making the study of media organizations more sensitive to time and place; and (3) demonstrate how media organizations shape society, thus redirecting the attention of organizational scholars to power and inequality.

The project will also enable the development of a state-level data base and make it accessible on the web. It will contain data on magazines, printing, the economy, the post office, churches, reform associations, and schools. Before 1870, state-level data on many aspects of American society are scarce, so this data base will fill a huge gap in our knowledge of America. This data base will be a valuable resource for many researchers, including historical sociologists, social-movement scholars, sociologists of religion, and economic and social historians.