Our Research

The faculty at the Labor Center is involved in a number of cutting-edge research projects. These include local projects directly in support of the labor movement and more long-term academic research. Under the direction of the faculty, graduate students in the Labor Center have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in a wide variety of labor research. Recent projects include:

Living Wages

This research explores the economic impact of living wage ordinances, tracks the successes and failures of the living wage movement, assesses the implementation and monitoring by cities with living wage laws, and theorizes the factors that lead to more successful living wage campaigns and outcomes. Stephanie Luce is the author of Fighting for a Living Wage (Cornell University Press, 2004) and co-author with Robert Pollin of The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy, which was published by the New Press in 1998.

Labor and Community Coalitions

This research project focuses on the ability of labor-community groups to mobilize around economic justice issues. The research by Eve Weinbaum includes case studies of communities that mount grassroots organizing campaigns around a variety of issues, including plant closings, economic development policy, and civil rights/anti-racism efforts. The work focuses on issues of leadership, organizing capacity, and the importance of failure in paving the way for success.

Capital Mobility

With increasing attention paid to the international economy and the movement of firms across borders, it is crucial that we develop an understanding of when, how, and why firms move. Stephanie Luce has been working with Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University to track international firm and job relocation. They created the first database of job movement in 2001, and updated that work in 2004. Their latest report on the impact of U.S.-China trade relations on wages and jobs can be downloaded here.

Women AND Work

Labor Center faculty and staff are engaged in a number of projects examining the situation for women workers in general and low-wage women workers in particular. For example, Stephanie Luce and Dean Frutiger issued a report for the Women's Institute for Leadership Development looking at the potential for unionization to improve wages and working conditions for women workers in Massachusetts. In 2006, Stephanie Luce co-wrote an article with Mark Brenner for Monthly Review looking at the conditions for women workers forty years after the founding of the National Organization for Women.

Documenting the Steelworkers' Victory at Ravenswood

Funding was provided by the United Steelworkers of America to document their victory at the Ravenswood Aluminum Company. Ravenswood: The Steelworkers' Victory and the Revival of American Labor, by Tom Juravich and Kate Bronfenbrenner, was published by the Cornell University Press in 1999.

cOmmonwealth of Toil

The Massachusetts Legislature provided funds to produce a popular book about the history of workers and their unions in the commonwealth.

Commonwealth of Toil: Chapters in the History of Massachusetts Workers and Their Unions, by Tom Juravich, William F. Hartford, and James R. Green, was published in 1996 by the University of Massachusetts Press.

Bread Without Roses

Also funded by the Massachusetts state legislature, this research looks at family and work issues among call center representatives, immigrant workers in fish processing, operating room nursing staff, and displaced industrial workers.

A book manuscript is being completed by Tom Juravich.

Childcare and Family Policy.

Research and advocacy around early childhood education and care, and the ways unions can work with children's advocates and researchers to improve options for working families.

Eve Weinbaum coordinates Working Families Massachusetts, a broad-based coalition of unions and community groups working with counterparts in other states to achieve quality childcare and paid parental leave policies for working families.