September 2005 (No. 8)
Editor: Terence K. Huwe
Contributors: Elizabeth del Rocío Camacho, Janice Kimball


IIR News & Events
New Format for IIR eNews
New Policy Brief on Minimum Wage and the California Economy
First IIR Faculty Seminar: Dan Mitchell, UCLA
Visiting Scholars and Post Doctoral Fellows
Recent IIR Working Papers
Robert Reich Joins the Goldman School
Karen Chapple Recognized for Research on IT Jobs
Irene Bloemraad Announces Fall 2005 Immigration Workshop
Sponsored Research: 2004-2005 Labor & Education Fund Grant Recipients
Sponsored Research: Other Grants
New Employees at IIR–and Fond Farewells

IIR Unit News
Center for the Study of Child Care Employment News
Center for Work, Technology and Society News
CPER News
IIR Library: Library Acquires Oakland Art Museum Strike Exhibit
Labor Center News
Labor Project for Working Families: First Five Funds Major Collaborative Project

Campus Events
Center for Latin American Studies Events
Coming Soon: Marc Blitzstein’s Play “The Cradle Will Rock”




IIR NEWS & EVENTS


New Format for IIR eNews

eNews has a new format this fall. The email version will be much briefer, and will link to the Web editions. The email edition will give you links and headlines, and the Web edition with provide greater detail for those who are interested in various topics. We're going continue to focus on shortening the email, but providing full information on the Web throughout fall 2005.


New Policy Brief on Minimum Wages and the California Economy
Michael Reich, Arindrajit Dube and Gina Vickery have published the following paper:
“Minimum Wage and the California Economy: The Economic Impact of AB 48"

The policy brief is online, together with updated resources on minimum wages.


IIR Faculty Seminar: Daniel J. B. Mitchell

Title: "Implications of the 'New' Model of Employer Ascendancy"

Mark your calendars: the first Faculty Seminar of the fall will be held on September 26. Details will follow.


IIR Welcomes Fall 2005 Visiting Scholars and International Post Doctoral Fellows

Dion Aroner – United States
Dion Aroner, former Assembly member 14th District California, is a Visiting Scholar/Legislator-in-Residence with the Center for Labor Research & Education from January, 2005 through December, 2005. Ms. Aroner is continuing her work on various human services and childcare workforce policy projects. She is sponsored by Carol Zabin from January, 2005 through December, 2005.

Fahad Awaleh – Norwegian School of Management, Oslo, Norway
Professor Fahad Awaleh is a full-time research professor in the Department of Strategy at Norwegian School of Management. Fahad works on the developments in the American electronics industry and the Norwegian electronics industry. Alaweh will be visiting for the period May 1, 2005 through October 31, 2005 and is sponsored by Professor Trond Petersen.

Elizabeth Greenwood – United States
Ms. Greenwood is a visiting scholar from MIT and will conduct environmental economics research with Professor Michael Greenstone, MIT. Some current projects include exploring the possible economic effects of climate change over the next 100 years and how nuclear testing in Nevada has affected mortality rates and property values. Ms. Greenwood is sponsored by Michael Reich and will here from August, 2005 through August, 2006.

Oscar Gonzalez-Peral – Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland
Oscar Gonzalez-Peral’s research focus is labor economics and the possible impact of the liberalization of migration rules in Europe (free mobility). He will be at the Institute of Industrial Relations for one year beginning in August 2005 on a scholarship from the Swiss National Science Foundation. Gonzalez-Peral is sponsored by Professor Michael Reich.

Brian McCall – University of Minnesota
Brian Mc Call is a visiting Professor from the Industrial Relations Center, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. He is sponsored by David Card, Professor of Economics, UCB. His current research interests: The Impact of Shift Work on Worker Injuries; Job Mobility and Wage Inequality and Dispute Resolution in Workers' Compensation. Professor McCall will be here through December, 2005.

Bjorn E. Mork – University of Oslo, Norway
Professor Bjorn Mork is a Sociologist from the University of Oslo, Norway. He has since 2000 worked at the Interventional Centre, Rikshospitalet-Radiumhospitalet HF, Oslo, Norway. In 2005, he will continue his work on a project there that is called “Changing Medical Practices – A study of crosss-disciplinary collaboration, learning and innovation in a Norwegian University Hospital”. Bjorn Mork will be visiting from April, 2005 through October 31, 2005 and is under the sponsorship of Professor Trond Petersen.

Susan Helper – Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio
Susan Helper is a Professor of Economics from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. Ms. Helper’s research is a joint project with Professor David Levine of the Haas School of Business which examines the impact of employment in Mexican maquilas (export-oriented factories) on health outcomes. This project will shed light on the effect of export-led policies (and of employment relations within firms) on a key measure of development -- health outcomes. Susan Helper will be here from July, 2005 through March, 2006.

Marco Leonardi – University of Milan, Milano, Italy
Marco Leonardi is a Professor of Economics at Dipartimento di Studi del Lavoro, Unversita Statale di Milano, Milano, Italy. Mr. Leonardi’s research focuses on wage inequality, labour market institutions and wage inequality and product demand shifts and wage inequality. Marco is sponsored by Michael Reich and Enrico Moretti, Economics Department, UCB.

Thomas Rankin – United States
Tom Rankin, former President, California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, is a Visiting Scholar/Labor-Leader-in-Residence with the Center for Labor Research & Education at IIR from June, 2005 through June, 2006. He is sponsored by Katie Quan, Chair, Center for Labor Research & Education.

Tsuyoshi Tsuru-Hitosubashi – University, Tokyo, Japan
Tsuyoshi Tsuru is a Professor of Economics at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan and will be at UC Berkeley as a Freeman Fellow. He is sponsored by Professor Clair Brown, Center for Work Technology at IIR. Tsuru’s current research areas include: “institutional and quantitative analysis of industrial relations in Japan; analysis of the structure and transformation of the Japanese personnel system and analysis of innovation and evolution in productions systems”. Professor Tsuru will teach an economics class at IIR in fall, 2005 and will be here through February, 2006.

Pietro Vertova – Italy University of Siena
Pietro Vertova is an economic researcher at Italy University of Siena and is sponsored by Professor Michael Reich. He is visiting the winter and spring semesters of 2005. His work is in welfare economics. His research involves studying the impact of employment protection legislation on wages and productivity among workers with various skill levels.


International Post-Doctoral Fellows at the Institute of Industrial Relations

Paolo Buonanno – University of Milan - Bicocca, Italy
Mr. Paolo Buonanno is a post-doc student at UC Berkeley under the mentorship of Professor David Card, Economics. Mr. Buonanno will be here from August 26, 2005 through March 31, 2006.

Federico Cingano – Univ. Pompeu Fabreu - Barcelona, Spain
Mr. Federico Cingano is a post-doc student at UC Berkeley under the mentorship of Professor David Card, Economics. Mr. Cingano will be here from September 1, 2005 through May 31, 2006.

Emilia Del Bono – University of Oxford, England
Ms. Emilia Del Bono is a post-doc student at UC Berkeley under the mentorship of Professor David Card, Economics. Ms. Del Bono will be here from July 1, 2005 through October 30, 2005.

Carlo Devillanova – Univ. Pumpeu Fabra-Barcelona, Spain
Mr. Carlo Devillanova is a post-doc student at UC Berkeley under the mentorship of Professor David Card, Economics. Mr. Devillanova will be here from October 1, 2005 through December 20, 2005.

Alfonso Rosolia – Univ. Pumpeu Fabra-Barcelona, Spain
Mr. Alfonso Rosolia is a post-doc student at UC Berkeley under the mentorship of Professor David Card, Economics. Mr. Rosolia will be here from September 1, 2005 through May 31, 2006.

Andrea Weber – Vienna University of Technology, Austria
Ms. Andrea Weber is a post-doc student at UC Berkeley under the mentorship of Professor David Card, Economics. Ms. Weber will be here from August 1, 2005 through July 31, 2006.


Recent IIR Working Papers

Clair Brown and Greg Linden (May 1, 2005):
Offshoring in the Semiconductor Industry: Historical Perspectives

Ruth Berins Collier and Samuel P. Handlin (August 10, 2005):
Shifting Interest Regimes of the Working Classes in Latin America

Karen Chapple (May 1, 2005):
Promising Futures: Workforce Development and Upward Mobility in Information Technology

Arindrajit Dube, Suresh Naidu, and Michael Reich (August 22, 2005).
Can a Citywide Minimum Wage Be An Effective Policy Tool? Evidence From San Francisco

Mary C. Noonan, Sandra S. Smith, and Mary E. Corcoran (August 1, 2005):
Examining the Impact of Welfare Reform, Labor Market Conditions, and the Earned Income Tax Credit on the Employment of Black and White Single Mothers

Amy Vassalotti
How will an increase from $6.75 to $7.75 in the California minimum wage impact the California economy?


Robert Reich Appointed Joins the Goldman School

Professor Reich is a familiar face, having a been a visiting scholar at the Goldman School in 2004-2005. Over the summer he joined the faculty at Goldman. Professor Reich was Secretary of Labor during the Clinton Administration. IIR is pleased to welcome Professor Reich, who is affiliated with the Institute.

Full story: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/07/22_reichatcal.shtml


Karen Chapple Recognized for New Research
Study shows promise of entry-level IT jobs for low-wage workers

REPRINTED FROM UCB MEDIA RELATIONS
By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 14 July 2005

BERKELEY – Never mind the headlines about offshore outsourcing. A University of California, Berkeley, professor says some regions in the United States offer a solid future for information technology jobs, particularly for low-wage workers entering the field.

Karen Chapple, an assistant professor of city and regional planning who teaches courses on economic development, poverty and metropolitan planning, says her research shows that an increasing simplification of information technology skills, transformation of the IT workplace from a concentrated high-tech industry to virtually every business in America, and an increase in training services, are vastly increasing opportunities and rewards for jobseekers with minimal education.

"The major finding," said Chapple in an interview, "is that if you can get in the IT door, you're going to have incredible wage gains - up to a 56 percent increase in wages over just three years. I think it's the key to upward mobility."

Training program graduates Chapple talked to found their wages increase from about $13 an hour in retail, service and construction jobs to $20 an hour in IT. Those who moved into IT with only a high school diploma or general equivalency degree (GED) saw wages increase by 74 percent, Chapple said, while those with a college degree reported salary boosts averaging 60 percent, and those with an associate's degree experienced wage gains of 36 percent. This suggests, she said, that if someone can't earn a four-year college degree, they would be better off attending a short training program than going to community college.

AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of UC Berkeley's School of Information Management & Systems, has studied information technology and regional economic development from Silicon Valley to India. She said American IT workers have been affected by waves of outsourcing of their jobs in recent years while simultaneously being hurt by the recession.

Today, said Saxenian, the country is emerging from the recession and witnessing a steady growth of IT jobs in previously atypical fields, such as health care, agriculture and biotechnology. She predicted that the spread of IT to non-traditional areas will be the source of increased job opportunities.

Chapple spent four years assessing the IT scene with the use of Web-based and personal interviews with city and suburban IT employers, job hunters, workers, trainers and policymakers in the field of workforce development. She asked questions related to educational background, job placement, job duties, length of employment, pay, career goals and more.

She also did a regression analysis to account for changes in IT jobs in different regions, finding that the metropolitan areas most vulnerable to substantial entry-level IT job losses tend to be large cities with a disproportionate share of entry-level occupations.

On another positive note, Chapple found that, generally, only the large IT and IT services companies she interviewed were interested in offshoring more of their information technology jobs.

"Many companies fear that shifting jobs offshore will interfere with how they do business," she wrote in an appendix to the report. "Face-to-face contact is critical not only in stimulating creativity but also in preserving what companies call 'tribal' knowledge…of the business."

What becomes of these training program graduates when their jobs are outsourced?

Chapple told the story of a Laotian immigrant she interviewed. Armed with just his GED and a training program certificate, he landed an entry-level IT job at a large banking operation. Then he was laid off a year ago when the institution outsourced its 800-employee IT division.

"His options?" Chapple asked. "He could go to any number of small businesses that just need one (computer) help desk person. He'll make less money and benefits, but he'll survive. The manufacturing person who loses his or her job will not. Those jobs are gone and aren't being replaced. That's the nice thing about getting an IT skill set, the world is open to you."

With more than 1 million entry-level IT jobs currently in the U.S. and a predicted growth of over 5 percent per year for the next eight years, employers cannot fill all the new positions with workers from four-year colleges or from abroad, she concluded. That is, in part, because the moderate-skill jobs pay less than college-educated workers are willing to accept, about $15 an hour for an entry-level position, Chapple said.

The report, prepared for UC Berkeley's Institute for Urban and Regional Development, explains how this has happened, beginning with the evolution of IT jobs from the early days of programming, which required computer science degrees or close to it, to today's simpler, support jobs requiring skills that can be learned in short-term training programs.

"Where yesterday's computer support specialist repaired IBM 486s, today's installs home computer networks for the cable company," writes Chapple in "Promising Futures: Workforce Development and Upward Mobility in Information Technology."

In her report, funded by the National Science Foundation and the UC Institute for Labor & Employment, she found that just 30 percent of IT jobs are within specific information technology companies, with the rest dispersed across hundreds of other industries.

Training program graduates may initially be able to fix printers, but on-the-job learning can teach them more and more about software and networking, increasing their earning and advancement abilities, Chapple says. Once they get their foot in the door of the IT industry through a training program, they can also return to school to advance further, she said.

As the labor market becomes increasingly "deinstitutionalized" by moves to more part-time, contract and temporary jobs, as well as by a declining minimum wage, shrinking unions, layoffs, baby-boomer retirements and deregulation, Chapple said, training programs play an ever larger role and should be examined closely.

Chapple noted that the federal government implemented the Workforce Investment Act in 2000, with funding of $6 billion, to develop a network of training providers. That's a far cry, she said, from the $24 billion available in 1978 (in current dollars).

The result is a trend toward privatization of job training programs, with the nonprofit programs servicing the most disadvantaged workers stuck in the inner city, even though people with training needs are increasingly found throughout the metropolitan area.

Chapple said she found the nonprofit and public programs to be better connected with employers and real job market demands, more focused on a hands on, classroom approach demanding student commitment, and determined to teach the "soft skills" that many disadvantaged workers need to know to move successfully from a low-paying job in a burger joint or janitorial service.

"This is a thoughtful analysis that employment and training professionals will find useful as they grapple with addressing issues of long-term employment sustainability and program development," said Lorraine Giordano, executive director of the San Francisco-based Information Technology Consortium.

The study relied on repeated interviews with 93 nonprofit IT training program graduates from 2000 and 2001. Compared to the overall U.S. IT workforce, Chapple said, they were disproportionately minority, female and uneducated. But she found that three to four years after finishing the training, 79 percent of the 63 graduates who could still be located were still working in IT and reported significant wage gains.

"This is a field where there's tremendous opportunity to move up," Chapple said.

The full report is online at:
http://www-iurd.ced.berkeley.edu/pub/abstract_mg200501.htm.


Irene Bloemraad Announces Immigration Workshop

Irene Bloemraad will once again be sponsoring the Berkeley interdisciplinary immigration workshop.

WHAT: The immigration workshop is an informal group of faculty, students, and visiting researchers interested in all aspects of migration (including the 2nd generation), both in the United States and around the world. The main goal is to help members develop their migration-related research, and to build a community of migration scholars at Berkeley. The group also has an email list for migration-related information (fellowships, talks, data sources, etc.).

WHO: Anyone at Berkeley (student, faculty, post-doc, visitor) may participate. The group also has a few non-Berkeley affiliates. The workshop is directed by Irene Bloemraad, Assistant Professor in Sociology, and supported by the generous financial assistance of the Institute of Industrial Relations.

The group normally meets every two weeks at noon on Friday to read and comment on participants’ work. There will also be two outside speakers this year, Jen'nan Ghazal Read in September and Mary Waters in March. Professor Waters visit will coincide with a one-day conference on immigration research, to be held at the Institute of Industrial Relations.

If you are interested in attending, or even just being on our email list, please email Professor Bloemraad or one of the workshop coordinators: Shannon Gleeson (sgleeson@berkeley.edu) or Els de Graauw (degraauw@berkeley.edu).


Sponsored Research: 2004-2005 Grant Recipients, Labor and Education Fund

Arindrajit Dube, Research Economist, UC Berkeley
Project/Data Generation Grant
The Dynamics of Job-Quality Transformation:
Health Benefits in the Unionized Grocery Sector in California

David Levine, Professor, Business, UC Berkeley
Project/Data Generation Grant
What do Certifications of Process Quality tell us about Job Quality?

Alexandre Mas, Professor, Business, UC Berkeley
Project/Data Generation Grant
Nurse Unionization and the Quality of Care

Katie Quan, Chair, The Labor Center, UC Berkeley
Project/Data Generation Grant
Documenting the Effects of the Phase-out of the Multi-Fiber Agreement


Other Recent Sponsored Research Activity

Clair Brown and Greg Linden
“Positioning In the Value Chain To Capture Value: The Semiconductor Industry”
Sloan Foundation

Clair Brown, Benjamin Campbell, and Andrew Hildreth
“Competitive Semiconductors Manufacturing Program”
Urban Institute

Lauren Edelman and Laura Krieger
“Judicial Deference to Institutionalized Employment Practices”
National Science Foundation

Hillary Anger Elfenbein
“Effective Behavior Through Understanding Emotion”
National Institutes of Health

Margaret Weir, Steven Pitts
“Transportation Policy Development: Labor as a Missing Stakeholder”
University of California Transportation Center

Dara O’Rourke
“Community College for Migrant Workers”
U.S. Department of State

Trond Petersen
“The Impact of Family Adaptation on Careers and Wages”
W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research

Marcy Whitebook
“California's early care and education workforce”
David and Lucille Packard Foundation

Marcy Whitebook
“The California Early Care and Education Statewide Workforce Study”
First Five


New Employees at IIR

The IIR Community give a big welcome to Barbara Campbell, our returning Grants Administrator. Many of us remember Barbara and are delighted to see her again.

Hadidjah Rivera, our new MSO III, has spent the summer getting to know us and working closely with director Michael Reich. Welcome, Hadidjah!

The Labor Center recently appointed Katherine Yoo as its Adminstrative Analyst. Katherine comes to IIR with a great deal of UC experience. Also, Jenifer MacGillvary has returned from maternity to rejoin the Labor Center team. Welcome, Katherine and Jennifer!

…And Fond Farewells
We wish Tiehara Howell the very best in her new position at the Haas School, which she is enjoying very much. Also, the one and only Josephine Williamson is thriving at Engineering. Maureen Kawaoka, long-time friend of IIR, has retired but will always be part of the IIR community. Lea Grundy was recruited by SEIU and we’ll miss her, but with her tenure at the Labor Project for Working Families and the Labor Center, she too remains a member of our extended community. Best wishes, all!