UC Berkeley Labor Center
 
The Center for Labor Research and Education [Labor Center] is a public service and outreach program of the UC Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Founded in 1964, the Labor Center conducts research and education on issues related to labor and employment. The Labor Center's curricula and leadership training's serve to educate a diverse new generation of labor leaders. The Labor Center carries out research on topics such as job quality and workforce development issues, and we work with unions, government, and employers to develop innovative policy perspectives and programs. We also provide an important source of research and information on unions and the changing work force for students, scholars, policymakers and the public.
 
This position will involve gathering, analyzing, and interpreting a wide variety or research data, which may include selecting data samples, preparing questionnaires, and analyzing collected information according to established statistical methods. Prepares reports, charts, tables, and other visual aids.
 
Responsibilities 

• Plans studies, including the design of survey instruments and determining the sampling and reporting procedures.
• Cleans and prepares data sets, primarily from government sources, for analysis, using Stata.
• Collaborates on the design, documentation, testing and implementation of research studies.
• Gathers and analyzes research data; prepares and summarizes information and/or recommendations.
• May be involved in researching, evaluating and selecting new data reporting products.
  Drafts and edi ts reports and/or analyses.
• Researches and summarizes academic and applied research.

 
Required Qualifications 

• Bachelor's degree in related area and/or equivalent experience/training.
• Two-years of work experience conducting policy research.
• Demonstrated quantitative skills and experience in data/statistical analysis, including analyzing large government datasets.
• Strong Stata programming skills.
• Ability to take initiative and manage projects with minimal supervision.
• Skills to communicate complex information in a clear and concise manner both verbally and written.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, including the ability to work well with university faculty, staff and students as well as labor leaders and rank and file workers.

 
Preferred Qualifications 

• Master's degree in public po licy, economics, sociology, or related discipline.
• Coursework and/or applied research experience in industrial relations, labor economics, and/or labor market analysis.

 
Salary & Benefits 
Full-time position. Salary commensurate with experience. Excellent benefits.
 
How to Apply: 
Please submit applications via this portal:
https://hrw-vip-prod.is.berkeley.edu/psc/JOBSPROD/EMPLOYEE/HRMS/c/HRS_HRAM.HRS_CE.GBL?Page=HRS_CE_JOB_DTL&Action=A&JobOpeningId=20376&SiteId=1&PostingSeq=1
 
Equal Employment Opportunity 
The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applic ants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status.
 
Attachment : 443-Research Data Analyst UC Berkeley Labor Center.pdf (75 kb)

Hi Labor and Labor Movements members,

As you may recall, the LLM Section and the Chinese Association of Work and Labor (CAWL) have had a scholarly exchange dating back to 2012.  A group of us, in consultation with LLM leadership, have been planning a US-based conference as the next step in this exchange.  Over 2015, we have come up with a plan—still working out details, but we wanted to let you know, especially before ASA 2015.

WHEN AND WHERE: ASA 2016 Seattle.  One-day miniconference on Friday 8/19, the day before the first day of ASA (which is also the LLM day).

WHO: LLM, a delegation of Chinese sociologists from CAWL, SSSP, Critical Sociology, Global Labour Journal/Int’l Sociological Association Section RC44 (Labor Movements), plus a bunch of other ASA sections as cosponsors: Asia/Asian Am, Collective Behavior/Social Movements, Inequality/Poverty/Mobility, OOW, and PEWS.  Also a number of local Seattle cosponsors, including activist groups.

THEME: Still refining, but tentative working title "Labor Precarity, Resistance, and Consent: The US, China, and around the World.”  The idea is to keep it fairly broad while signaling some key areas of interest and the fact that the US and China will be a particular focus.  A call will go out.  

PUBLICATION PLANS: A number of journals are interested in special issues coming out of the miniconference.  Still in discussion, but we can be pretty confident that there will be some opportunities for publication.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:
- Seek out one of the planning group at ASA 2015 to find out more or share thoughts.  Members of the planning group who will be at ASA include: David Fasenfest, Jasmine Kerrissey, Jennie Romich, Chris Rhomberg, Brian Serafini, David Smith (of UCI), Chris Tilly, Lu Zhang (apologies if I have left anybody out).
- If you have reactions, suggestions, or especially if you want to help, drop me a note at tilly@ucla.edu .  (At the risk of sounding grouchy, I’d rather not offer to answer any and all questions…we are still figuring things out and will have more to say in coming months.)  We are forming working groups and will have more information on ways to help soon.
- WATCH THIS SPACE.  We expect to send at least one more update, and then the call.
- Respond to the call for papers when it comes out.
- Attend the conference at ASA 2016 Seattle!

Best,
Chris Tilly

Position: Academic 
Positions: Assistant Professor
Salary Range: Negotiable
Listing Active: August 1, 2015 through October 31, 2015
Date Position is Available: Fall 2016
Institution: Washington University in St. Louis
Department: Sociology
Contact: Heather Sloan-Randick
E-mail: hsloanra@wustl.edu 

Address: Apply to our website at https://jobs.wustl.edu. Job posting number 31369.

Washington University in St. Louis invites applications from outstanding scholars and teachers to join our recently re-established Department of Sociology. We are authorized to fill two tenure-track assistant professor positions. Candidates must have a recent Ph.D. in sociology or finish the Ph.D. by July 1, 2016. Duties include research for scholarly publication, teaching, student advising, and participation in department planning and university service. Washington University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer and especially encourages applications from women and members of under-represented and minority groups. Salary, teaching requirements, and research support will be highly competitive. 

Applications should be received by October 1, 2015 if at all possible, but the search committee will consider applications until the positions are filled. Applicants should submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statement of research and teaching interests, three letters of reference, and writing samples.  Applications and supporting materials, except reference letters, should be submitted electronically through the Washington University HR system at https://jobs.wustl.edu. Candidates should create an account as an external applicant, search for job requisition number 31369, complete the application form, and upload a CV and supporting materials.  Letters of reference should be e-mailed directly to Sarah Crean at sarahcrean@wustl.edu.

If applicants have questions about the application process, they should email Sarah Crean,sarahcrean@wustl.edu, for additional instructions.  All other questions may be directed to Heather Sloan-Randick, office manager for the Department of Sociology, at (314) 935-5852 or hsloanra@wustl.edu.

Employment eligibility verification required upon hire.

This employer offers benefits to all regular full-time and part-time employees, spouses, dependents and domestic partners.

This employer prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation/preference and gender identity/expression.

Kim Voss, Maurizio Atzeni, and Bryan Evans are organizing a session on “Economic Crisis and New Forms of Worker Organizing.” 

Here is a link to a description off all ISA RC 44 panels, as well as the portal for submitting abstracts:
http://www.isa-sociology.org/forum-2016/rc/rc.php?n=RC44.

The deadline for abstracts is September 30, 2015.  Please feel free to email me with questions (kimvoss@berkeley.edu). 

Economic Crisis and New Forms of Worker Organizing


Session Organizer(s)
Kim VOSS, University of California, Berkeley, USA, kimvoss@berkeley.edu
Bryan EVANS, Ryerson University, Canada, b1evans@politics.ryerson.ca
Maurizio ATZENI, Loughborough University, United Kingdom, m.atzeni@lboro.ac.uk

Session in English 

The economic crisis that engulfed many countries beginning in 2008 has had profound and varying effects on worker organizing. According to a recent ILO World of Work report, strikes and street demonstrations increased in some countries and declined in others. Almost everywhere, however, traditional union structures and modes of politics have been challenged by a new reality. This session invites both theoretically engaged and empirically rich papers that examine new forms of worker organizing that have been experimented with in the course of the last decade. 
Theoretically, we especially encourage papers that connect specific dynamics of the economic and political crisis to workers’ organization and mobilization. In both the Global North and South, people contend with deep insecurities of work and of life. Yet it remains unclear how these deep insecurities are articulated with the question of who, where and how capital is produced in historically and geographically uneven world regions or how different compositions of capital and politics create new subaltern groups, new collective subjectivities and new (or renewed) forms of struggles. 
Empirically, we are interested in a wide range of campaigns by workers and community groups to redressing insecurity and low-wage work, from living and minimum wage struggles to innovative strategies of trade unionism to altogether new alternatives.

The International Sociological Association's RC44 Research Committee on Labor Movements is sponsoring a number of paper sessions  for the ISA Forum in Vienna, July 11-14, 2016. The sessions will cover a range of good topics. but let me call your attention to one I am organizing on strikes (see below). The deadline for submissions is September 30, and you can send an abstract through the RC 44 web site at:  http://www.isa-sociology.org/forum-2016/rc/rc.php?n=RC44. 

If your work includes a current interest or focus on strikes, let me encourage you to consider submitting an abstract for the panel. If not, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might be interested.  If you have any questions, you can contact me at rhomberg@fordham.edu. Thank you and hope to see you in Vienna! 

Panel Search (ISA Forum Vienna 2016): Movements on the Job: Theorizing Strikes and Workplace Protest in Comparative Context


Session Organizer(s)
Chris RHOMBERG, Fordham University, USA, rhomberg@fordham.edu

Session in English 

Can workers still act collectively in the workplace to achieve lasting change? The strike has long been recognized as one of the most important ways that workers’ movements can mobilize to exercise power. Strike theory, however, is badly in need of an overhaul. Emerging in the post-World War Two era along with the institutionalization of collective bargaining in advanced capitalist countries, it viewed strikes as a routinized tactic within mature systems of Fordist industrial relations. 

As workplaces have changed and those systems have experienced varying levels of decline, the power of the traditional strike has been challenged. Yet some unions have continued to win notable victories, new forms of job-based action have emerged, and there has been an upsurge of militancy in developing countries without a broad base or history of institutionalized collective bargaining. 

These events highlight the changing forms and meanings of workplace mobilization, and call for a revival of theory from a broader comparative perspective. Among the questions to be considered on this session are: 

• What legal and institutional conditions, including state tolerance or repression, shape forms of workplace collective action in different contexts?
  
• What forms of economic, political, or symbolic leverage or power can workers exercise through different forms of action? 
  
• And what kind of conceptual frameworks do we need in order to develop more comparative analyses of strike mobilization and a better understanding of recent events?

Ph.D position attached to Global Production and Labour Standards Research Project 
A project involving teams from UNSW (Australia), Freie U (Germany), U Gothenburg (Sweden), LSE (UK), and BRAC (Bangladesh) will be conducting a study whose title is ‘Changes in the Governance of Garment Global Production Networks: Lead Firm, Supplier and Institutional Responses to the Rana Plaza Disaster.’The  project will analyze changes in lead firm policies and practices in selected developed countries and changes in actual labor and environmental standards in Bangladeshi factories that supply garments to lead firms in these countries. 

A Ph.D position will be funded by  the project for 3 years with the possibility of extension until completion of the degree. The Ph.D topic will be aligned with the project and will be undertaken within UNSW Business School in Sydney under the supervision of Prof. Steve Frenkel. An annual stipend of approximately AUD $25,000 (depending on exchange rates) will be paid. The position is available from January, 2016. 

Candidates should have an excellent undergraduate and/or Masters’ record and evidence of research capability. 

Candidates should submit an expression of interest (maximum one page) and a curriculum vita to s.frenkel@unsw.edu.au by 15 Sept., 2015. Names and contact details of two referees should be included.  

Please distribute widely:

Tenure-stream position in Sociology of Migration OR Migration, Race and Ethnicity available at University of Toronto Scarborough campus.

https://utoronto.taleo.net/careersection/10050/jobdetail.ftl?job=1500688

The closing date is September 10th, 2015.
Thanks,
Jennifer

***

Jennifer Jihye Chun
Director, Centre for the Study of Korea
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology (UTSC)
University of Toronto
jj.chun@utoronto.ca

Dear colleagues,
The International Sociological Association Forum will take place in Vienna, July 11-14, 2016.  If you have not been to ISA, it is a remarkable conference experience.  It is truly global, though inflected with the particular location (so the Vienna Forum will have a particularly strong European presence).  Unlike, say, the American Sociological Association, each Section of the ISA has a set of sessions for the full duration of the conference, so you can stick with one topic area for the entire time (or shop around).  I have gone to the stream organized by the Labor Movements Section (Research Council 44, or RC44 for short) at the last two ISAs, and have found it a remarkable learning experience.  As in past RC44s, RC44 will also be organizing some sessions with local labor activists, to take place July 10 before the rest of the meetings start.

RC44 has issued a Call for Papers for its sessions: http://www.isa-sociology.org/forum-2016/rc/rc.php?n=RC44 
Proposals due by September 30!  

Session proposals have already been selected, and paper proposals must be pegged to a particular session.  Let me commend to your attention two sessions on informal and precarious work and worker organizing, below.  But I recommend that you take a look at the full range of sessions as well.

Best,
Chris

Using Global Comparisons to Understand  21st Century Labor Movements among Informal Workers (Rina Agarwala & Chris Tilly, organizers)

In the 20th century, massive labor movements transformed work to regulate and protect it..  But in the century’s closing decades, firm subcontracting, government deregulation, and large-scale migration flows contributed to a shift of large areas of work outside labor laws.  Traditional labor unions have had difficulty organizing such workers, and have lost density and power.  Now new labor movements of informal workers have increasingly taken up the slack, building associational and symbolic power.

Cross-national comparisons have greatly advanced our understanding of formally protected workers’ labor movements .  Recent research on informal worker organizing, however, has largely been limited to country-level case studies. This session aims to push research on contemporary informal workers’ movements forward by examining cross-cutting themesacross multiple countries and sectors.  The panel seeks to address the following questions:

1.     What are commonalities and differences in how informal workers’ movements (across countries and sectors) organize, win, and fail?

2.     What are commonalities and differences in who is joining and leading these movements in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, migration status?

3.     What are the limits and potential of these new forms of organizing at the national and transnational levels?

Gender, Precarious Work, and Labor Organizing (Rina Agarwala and Ruth Milkman, organizers)

Gender is a defining feature of precarious and informal work in the 21st century. Women have long been disproportionately concentrated in temporary, casual, seasonal, part-time, and contract work.  Recently, men’s jobs also have begun to resemble those once relegated to women, as traditional forms of employment security as well as labor rights and legal protections have been eroded. A growing literature examines the gendered dimension of these expanding types of work, but the gender dynamics of collective efforts to challenge precarity and informality have received far less attention.

 

This session will focus on the relationship of gender to collective action repertoires among precarious/informal workers, and on the ways in which the organizations they have are gendered.  In contrast to traditional labor unions, such organizations are disproportionately led by women, address concerns traditionally associated with women workers, and adopt strategies that appeal to women.  This is often the case even when the workers involved are predominantly male. The session will explore these new forms of organizing in the United States, South Africa, India, and South Korea. We will center the session on two key questions: 

a.     How does precarious/informal worker organizing vary cross-nationally among countries with distinct political regimes, gender arrangements, trade union structures, and levels of economic development?

b.     What is the role of gender in structuring work and organizing strategies among precarious/informal workers, and why have organizations of these workers been led disproportionately by women?

see: 
http://speak4sociology.org/2015/08/13/tell-us-why-you-lovesociology/

Section Officers,

Good afternoon, I hope you’re well today. Here’s something to share with your members, if you’re interested in tapping into some of the social media buzz around the meeting.

Justin Anthony Lini MA
Program Coordinator, Governance and Information Systems
American Sociological Association
(202) 383-9005 x 330 - Lini@ASAnet.org
http://www.facebook.com/ASASections

Hopefully everyone's ASA meetings are off to a great start!

Our section events are as follows (ordered by date/time). Please check the meeting program for all locations; the online program can be accessed here):

Section on Labor and Labor Movements Council Meeting
Monday, August 24 at 7:00am

Section on Labor and Labor Movements Paper Session. Striking for Justice in Fast Food, Retail, and Home Care: Implications for the Broader Labor Movement
Mon, August 24, 4:30 to 6:10pm

Section on Labor and Labor Movements Reception (Offsite; ROC United/Food Chain Workers Alliance Offices, 77 W. Washington, Suite 1507, Chicago, IL 60602)
Mon, August 24, 6:30 to 8:30pm

Section on Labor and Labor Movements Paper Session. The Labor Market and Social Provision: Implications for Worker Health and Organizing
Tue, August 25, 8:30 to 10:10am

Section on Labor and Labor Movements Roundtables (one-hour)
Tue, August 25, 10:30 to 11:30am

Section on Labor and Labor Movements Business Meeting
Tue, August 25, 11:30am to 12:10pm

Section on Labor and Labor Movements Paper Session. Labor Formations in the Global South
Tue, August 25, 12:30 to 2:10pm

Section on Labor and Labor Movements Paper Session. Labor Besieged: Repression and Resistance in the Contemporary United States
Tue, August 25, 2:30 to 4:10pm