Member Projects

Organizing Lessons: Immigrant Attacks and Resistance!

Co-edited by: Victor Narro

UCLA Labor Center project director Victor Narro and Pitzer College professor José Calderón have released a new book as part of the “Taking Freedom” book series collaboration between SEIU’s Racial Justice Center, the MIT CoLab, and CUNY’s School of Labor and Urban Studies. Organizing Lessons: Immigrant Attacks and Resistance! features a collection of essays from immigrant rights activists, labor activists, and activist scholars working for immigrant and workers’ rights.

Work Organizational Reforms and Employment Relations in the Automotive Industry

By: Kenichi Shinohara

Book Description: General Motors (GM)'s attempt to adapt the renowned Toyota production system for its own automotive manufacturing plants had historically produced disappointing results. Why was it not sufficiently successful? This book aims to shed insights into GM's failed attempt through the analysis of work organization reforms and labor-management relations on production-system efficiency.

Reforming Capitalism for the Common Good

By: Charles Whalen

Book Description: This book of selected essays by Charles Whalen—a longtime LERA member and former editor of Perspectives on Work—presents constructive analyses of vital economic problems confronting the United States since the 1970s, giving special attention to challenges facing working families. The analyses, produced over three decades, address the causes and consequences of macroeconomic instability, job offshoring, community economic dislocation, financialization, and income inequality. They also explore the various dimensions of worker insecurity and underscore the dynamics of an ever-changing economy. The result is a compelling case for reforming capitalism by addressing workers’ interests as an integral part of the common good, and for reconstructing economics in the direction of post-Keynesian institutionalism.

International and Comparative Employment Relations

By: by Greg J. Bamber, Fang Lee Cooke, Virginia Doellgast and Chris F Wright

Book Description: Established as the standard reference for a worldwide readership of students, scholars and practitioners in international agencies, governments, companies and unions, this text offers a systematic overview of international employment relations.

Chapters cover the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Japan, South Korea, China, India and South Africa.

Workplace Then and Now

Longtime LERA member, labor attorney and national regional chapter vice-president Robert Chiaravalli (Strategic Labor & Human Resources) has made a series of short (2 min. to 5 min.) YouTube videos. The series is titled “Workplace Then and Now” and draws upon Chiaravalli’s decades of negotiation experience. And while his is a management-side firm, his insights are equally valuable for the labor side.

£1.8m project to investigate impact of automation

James Hayton Professor of Human Resource Management and Entrepreneurship, at the Warwick Business School, is leading involvement in a project that will investigate the drivers of why firms adopt automation technology and the impact it has on workers.

Read full article.

Eileen Appelbaum and Shawn Fremstad (Center for Economic Policy and Research) put together a chart that can be found at the link below, that covers what’s in the federal COVID-19 stimulus legislation — and what’s not, but should be. Rosemary Batt (Cornell) posted it on the LERA-D listserv on March 26.

https://cepr.net/the-u-s-response-to-covid-19-whats-in-federal-legislation-and-whats-not-but-still-needed

LERA Comments on Proposed NLRB Rule Change for Graduate Students

The National Labor Relations Board is considering a rule change that would strip graduate students at private universities of their right to organize unions. Erin Johansson, Jobs for Justice and LERA board member, proposed that LERA submit comments to the NLRB detailing LERA’s opposition to the proposed rule change, and the board approved it, given LERA’s explicit statement of support for the human right to organize.

Here is NLRB's rule being considered: https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/national-labor-relations-board-rulemaking/student-assistants-rule. Below is LERA's position on the NLRB's proposed rule change. The NLRB is accepting comments from the public through December 16, 2019.

LERA Comments on Proposed NLRB Rule Change (November 2019)

The National Labor Relations Board is considering a rule change that would strip the right of graduate students at private universities to organize unions. The Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) opposes this proposed rule change.

LERA was founded in 1947 as an organization for professionals in industrial relations and human resources. The association supports fundamental worker and human rights in the workplace and supports rights of the employees, employers, and their organizations to organize. As employment relations specialists, we understand the critical role of graduate student employment in supporting teaching, research and administration functions of universities. Graduate students should not be exempted from the fundamental human rights to organize and collectively bargain.

The 1935 National Labor Relations Act states that the policy of the U.S. is encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association. We believe that the current ruling, which affirms the right of graduate students at private universities to unionize, should remain in place.

If you have questions, please contact Erin Johannson.