While measures prohibiting child labor continue to be implemented world-wide, policy often neglects the experiences and opinions of working children themselves. In Peru, where child labor is formally against the law, neoliberal economic policies have created conditions that force children to seek work in the informal economy. Using a child-centered approach to research, Aufseeser will investigate the opinions of working children in Peru, exploring how they have reworked, resisted and adapted to economic, social and legal changes in their daily lives.

Funded by Graduate Student Research Grant, 2011-2012

The Effects of Organizational Context and Workplace Control in a Fast Food Establishment

Brian Serafini, Department of Sociology

Work in the fast food industry is commonly thought of as monotonous, alienating and degrading. In fact, little research has been done to determine how various structure of the workplace affects worker productivity, morale and dignity. Through interviews with company officials, employees, and his own participant observation, Serafini's study will compare practices in the fast food workplace to determine their outcomes for workers of diverse backgrounds.

Funded by Graduate Student Research Grant, 2011-2012

Enterprise Restructuring and Working Class Resistance in China

Shuxuan Zhou, Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies

Following the enterprise restructuring of the 1990s, familial and generational relations have shifted in socialist China. With this study, Shuxuan Zhou will look specifically at state-sector enterprise employees in China in Xiamen and Hong Kong. Through personal interviews with former state-sector female workers, as well as interning with the China Labor Bulletin in Hong Kong, Zhou will investigate the family dynamic as a result of labor.

Funded by Graduate Student Research Grant, 2012-2013

Grassroots Labor in Egypt's Tahrir Revolution

Shon Meckfessel, Department of English

The ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 was preceded by years of struggle by labor, both organized and spontaneous, against the regime's austerity measures and neoliberal policies. Yet despite the working class's central role in the revolution, its contributions remain neglected. For this study, Meckfessel will travel to Cairo, Egypt to conduct five months of ethnographic fieldwork on the on-going role of grassroots labor in post-Mubarak Egypt.

Funded by Graduate Student Research Grant, 2011-2012

Islamic Business and Labor in Turkey

Evrim Gormus, International Studies

Recent years have seen the rise of specifically Islamic business associations and enterprises in Turkey. Through interviews with both union and business officials, and a survey of the country's Islamic labor and business press, Gormus will explore how class relations shape such organizations; how class conflict is handled; and to what extent Islamic moral values, ideals of justice, and business ethics inform the relationship between labor and management.

Funded by Graduate Student Research Grant, 2011-2012

Research Updates

Labor Studies research sponsored by the Bridges Center is on-going.

Available here are updates on recent grants awarded by the Center.

Research Updates

Intercultural Workplace Communication in China

Li Liu, Department of Communication

For Chinese office workers in American branch companies in China, speaking English is a major job requirement, strongly factoring in hiring, promotions and pay scales. Through interviews with American executives, managers, management consultants, and local Chinese employees over a wide spectrum of growing global industries, including software engineering, logistics, and investment banking, Liu will explore how Chinese employees understand their multicultural workplaces, and how understandings differ across cultural backgrounds.

Fall 2011 Update

Through interviews with foreign professionals and local Chinese employees who use English or Chinese as first or second language, Li's research has discovered several sets of speech codes that organizational members use to describe their language experience at work. Further more, these speech codes are not exclusively correlated to their native cultural background; instead, organizational members choose to use either just one set of codes, or combine several sets of codes together while describing their multicultural work experience.

This grant will allow Li to travel to China in November 2011 and conduct on-site visit to companies and organizations, as well as follow-up interviews with informants she talked with over conference calls. This will conclude her dissertation research, covering over two years of investigation and interviews.

Funded by Graduate Student Research Grant, 2010-2011

Mapping Indonesian Nurse Migration Patterns Working Overseas and How Government of Indonesia Policies Influence Nurse Migration Patterns

Izana Anggriani, Department of Global Health

Similar to other developing nations, Indonesian health workers often leave their own country to work in wealthier countries. However, very little information exists on the number of Indonesian health workers overseas or their destinations. Anggriani's study aims to explain the patterns of global migration of Indonesian nurses while analyzing how policies of the government of Indonesia influence such patterns.

Fall 2011 Update

Using interviews with Indonesian government officials, private recruitment companies, nursing organizations; a nurses' focus group discussion; an internet survey; and statistics regarding nurse migration patterns overseas, Anggriani's study is nearing completion.

Available data shows that 9,705 Indonesian nurses worked overseas between 1989-2010. Most nurses went to Middle Eastern countries. She found the main reasons nurses chose to work overseas included obtaining a higher salary; improving their nursing knowledge and skills; providing financial support to their family back home in Indonesia; and the opportunity to travel to another country and experience a different culture.

Angrianni concludes: "Indonesian nurses have sought opportunities to work abroad for over 20 years and their numbers will likely increase because of nursing shortages in many countries and a nursing surplus in Indonesia. Typically, multiple entities are at play with the recruitment, placement and monitoring of Indonesian nurses who work overseas with weak systems of coordination and unclear roles for the provision of monitoring nurses who are overseas. Complicating this process is that there is no comprehensive database of nurses who work abroad."

Funded by Duggan Fellowship, 2010-2011

When the Whistle Didn't Blow

Angela Day, Department of Political Science

Employees in industries such as oil production, mining, and nuclear power are often in a position to come forward with health, safety and environmental concerns. Policy makers have drafted "whistleblower" laws to protect workers who come forward. Yet many workers remain silent. Angela's dissertation explores why this is the case, and what institutional barriers may be responsible. With this grant, she will travel to conduct research at the Hanford Nuclear Site in eastern Washington.

Fall 2011 Update

Angela's work to date includes time spent in the Department of Energy Public Reading Room in Richland, Washington, and other archival research. These data show how Congressional mandates are translated into rules, which then flow down from the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to individual managers and workers within the private organizations operating at the Hanford site. This initial research reveals variation at each step of the process, and differences in how workers perceive their right to raise safety concerns. The final phase of Angela�s research includes conducting interviews with workers and managers. With review by the Institutional Review Board complete, Angela looks forward to spending time on site and hearing directly from workers.

Funded by Graduate Student Research Grant, 2010-2011

Whether and how unionized occupations pattern voter turnout

Jennifer Laird, Department of Sociology

Unions have long been influential political players, mobilizing union members and non-members alike to participate in elections. In this study, Jennifer will examine what effect a particular occupation's unionization rate has on the voter turnout of both union and non-union workers in that occupation; whether these effects vary by occupation and election type; and how these effects have changed over time.

Fall 2011 Update

Laird has completed her project on unions and voter turnout. Using data from the Current Population Survey, her research found that union members have higher voter turnout in U.S. elections, but the magnitude of the union effect varies by occupation. Union membership is a significantly stronger predictor of voter turnout for protective services workers, administrative assistants, repair workers, agriculture workers, machine operators, and laborers than it is for professionals. For professionals, the turnout effect of belonging to a union is negligible.

The study�s results suggest that belonging to a union provides low-skill workers with exposure to politically-oriented activities such as letter-writing campaigns, policy debates, or news monitoring �exposure that they would not normally receive on the job. For those at the top of the occupational hierarchy, some of the civic skills acquired through union membership may be redundant with civic skills acquired on the job.

Laird's findings are reported in an article currently under review by the journal Social Forces.

Funded by Graduate Student Research Grant, 2010-2011

Downloads

Many of the research grants awarded by the Bridges Center produce labor studies journal articles, books, and other publications.

Available here are papers and publications that resulted from Bridges Center faculty and graduate student grants.

To read or print papers, click on the titles to the right.

PDF Downloads

Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view PDF files. This is a free program available from the Adobe web site. Follow the download directions on the Adobe web site to get your copy.

Click on a report title to download it.

Autonomous Choices and Patriotic Professionalism:
On Governmentality in Late-Socialist China

Lisa Hoffman, Urban Studies, UW Tacoma

In China, where college students once received job assignments from the government upon graduation, graduates now attend job fairs where they have more choice over their future professions. Yet young professionals are still highly influenced by notions of social responsibility and patriotism. Lisa Hoffman looks at the new "patriotic professionalism" of young Chinese professionals in the modern economy.

Funded by Faculty Research Grant, 2003-2004

Published in Economy and Society, Vol. 35, No. 4. (November 2006), pp. 550-570.

Children's Environmental Health Experience and Interest Among Pediatric Care Providers in Vietnam

Nancy Beaudet, Occupational and Environmental Medicine; Dan Jacoby, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Bothell;
Catherine Karr, Occupational and Environmental Medicine; Quan C. Nguyen, Department of Pediatrics, Thomas Jefferson Medical School; Quynh Kleu, Project Vietnam Foundation, Fountain Valley, CA

Since children's systems are developing, they are particularly vulnerable to workplace chemical and injury hazards. In Vietnam children work in gold mines, timber operations, cargo transport, and other jobs, and mechanisms to track the effects of labor on children's health are limited. Through a survey of pediatric health providers in Vietnam, this study investigates the effect of work on children's health in the country and what initiatives might be taken to address the issue.

Funded by Faculty Research Grant, 2008-2009

Published in Journal of Health and Pollution, Vol. 1, No. 2. (2011).

Living Wage Campaigns and Laws

Margaret Levi and David Olson, Department of Political Science, and Erich Steinman, Department of Sociology

Bridges Chair Emeriti, David Olson and Margaret Levi, led a research program focusing on the living wage movement in the U.S. examining the political and economic implications of living wage campaigns. These campaigns generally advocate establishing a base wage rate (above the minimum wage) for employees working on local, publicly funded contracts. The core idea advanced by the movement is that individuals who work for the public should not be living in poverty, but should at least be earning a living wage.

Funded by a grant from the Russel Sage Foundation to the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, 2000-2001

Published in WorkingUSA, Vol. 6, No. 3. (Winter 2002�3), pp. 111�132.

'The More Things Change...': The Declining Relative Status of Black Women Workers

Raine Dozier, Department of Sociology

Since the 1970s, workers in the United States have faced increasing wage inequality as the economy has shifted away from manufacturing and towards the service sector � the rich have gotten richer, and the poor have gotten poorer. While women have not been hit as hard due to increased education and other factors, the wage gap between African American and white women has increased significantly. Raine Dozier explores the causes behind this increasing racial inequality.

Funded in part by the Duggan Fellowship, 2006-2007

Labor Studies Research

A complete listing of all labor research grants awarded by the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, in reverse chronological order from the present to 1994.

Complete Listing

2011-2012

Graduate Student Grants

Deconstructing Child Labor in Peru: The Right to Work or Not to Work
Dena Aufseeser, Department of Geography
Brand Responsbility Project
Anne Greenleaf and Milli Lake, Department of Political Science
Landscapes of Solidarity: Timber Workers and the Making of Place in the Pacific Northwest, 1917-1948
Steven Beda, Department of History
Grassroots Labor in Egypt's Tahrir Revolution
Shon Meckfessel, Department of English
The Effects of Organizational Context and Workplace Control in a Fast Food Establishment
Brian Serafini, Department of Sociology

2010-2011

Graduate Student Grants

Mapping Indonesian Nurse Migration Patterns Working Overseas and How Government of Indonesia Policies Influence Nurse Migration Patterns
Izana Anggriani, Department of Global Health
Silent Voices: Racial Minority Clinicians in Mental Health Counseling
Chami Arachchi, School of Social Work
Landscapes of Solidarity: Timber Workers and the Making of Place in the Pacific Northwest, 1917-1948
Steven Beda, Department of History
When the Whistle Didn't Blow
Angela Day, Department of Political Science
Whether and how unionized occupations pattern voter turnout
Jennifer Laird, Department of Sociology
Intercultural Workplace Communication in China
Li Liu, Department of Communication
Troubling Neoliberal Notions of Farmer Choice: Hybrid Bt Cotton Seed Production Among Adivasis in West India
Kacy McKinney, Department of Geography

2008-2009

Faculty Grants

Workplace Hazards and Conditions Associated with Child Labor in Vietnam
Nancy Beaudet, Occupational and Environmental Medicine
Dan Jacoby, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Bothell
Catherine Karr, Occupational and Environmental Medicine
Religious Preferences and Economic Views in Contemporary America: The Potential for Interfaith Alliances
Mark Smith, Political Science

Graduate Student Grants

Recruitment Abuses in the United States Guest Worker Program
Christopher Benoit, School of Law
The Contradictions of Reproductive Labor in Bahia, Brazil
Coleen Carrigan, Department of Anthropology
Intercultural Customer Service in Indian Call Centers
Tabitha Hart, Department of Communication
An exploratory study of the perception and reality of workplace physical and emotional violence against correctional nurses
Sarah Veele-Brice, Department of Health Services

2007-2008

Faculty Grants

African American Longshore Workers
Mike Honey, Labor and Ethnic Studies and American History, UW Tacoma
Cotton Body Politics and Social Reproduction in Andhra Pradesh, India
Priti Ramamurthy, Women Studies

Graduate Student Grants

Spaces of Survival: Daily-wage Labor Markets in India
Srinivas Chokkula, Department of Geography
'Integrating a Burning House:' Black Worker Struggles for Affirmative Action in the Age of Deindustrialization
Trevor Griffey, Department of History
The Role of Caring Labor for African American Grandmothers
Janet Jones, School of Social Work
Union Power and Technological Change
Devin Kelly, Department of Sociology
Collaboration and Variation among Nonprofit Organizations and Unions in Hong Kong
Jaime Kelly, Department of Geography
Health Insurance Reform and Self Care in Washington State
Emily Lynch, Department of Anthropology

2006-2007

Faculty Grants

Race Radicals: Asian American radical struggles
Moon-Ho Jung, Department of History
Sweatshop Labor and Subjective Agency in a Globalizing World
Divya C. McMillin, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Tacoma
Workforce Challenges and Emerging Labor Structures in the U.S. Video Game Industry
Gina Neff, Department of Communications

Graduate Student Grants

The Unionization of Future Activists?: The Biographical Impact of ILWU Membership
Jon Agnone, Department of Sociology
Public Health and the Migrant Workers: A Comparative Study of Anti-Tuberculosis Efforts in Seattle and San Francisco
Alex Morrow, Department of History
Echoes of Mutiny: Migration, Empire, and Indian Revolutionaries on the Pacific Coast
Seema Sohi, Department of History

Staff Research Grants

Broken Lives: Living and Losing the American Dream
Kellus Stone, Administrator in Industrial Engineering

2005-2006

Faculty Grants

Victory through Justice: Mobilizing Labor for Total War
Elizabeth Kier, Department of Political Science

Graduate Student Grants

Punishment and Profit: the Politics of Prisons and Neoliberal Restructuring in the American West
Ann Bonds, Department of Geography
'Race, Economic Development, and the Remaking of Urban Liberalism in San Francisco, 1950-1980
Robert Cruickshank, Department of History
Standing at the Crossroads: Intersectional Roots, Realities, and Responses of the Welfare Rights Movement to Racial Frames
Rose Ernst, Department of Political Science
Examining the geographies of reproductive health care in Canada and France, focusing specifically on the practice of Midwifery
Maria Fannin, Department of Geography
Socializing Future Faculty to the Norms of Work and Family in Academe
Kate Quinn, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, College of Education
Disciplining the Managerial Subject: Discourses of Political Economy in the United States, 1820-1920
Joseph Wycoff, Department of History

2004-2005

Faculty Grants

Field work in Moscow, Russia to research the working conditions in Russian hospice
Jose Alaniz, Slavic Languages and Literatures
Research on the significance of labor law for the realization of workers' rights in China
Susan Whiting, Department of Political Science

Graduate Student Grants

Common Women: Class and Labor in Nineteenth Century Philadelphia
Karla Kelling, Department of History
How workforce intermediaries such as temp agencies, training programs, unions, and industry associations structure the labor market and effect workers' career paths
Nicolas Velluzzi, Department of Geography

2003-2004

Faculty Grants

Book project that addresses labor, class, and ethnicity in the movement to expel Chinese workers from the American west
Gail Dubrow, Urban Design & Planning, Architecture
Research for book "The Southern Diaspora: How Black Workers & White Southerners Transformed America"
James Gregory, Department of History

Published as The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (University of North Carolina Press, 2005)
Martin Luther King Jr. and the Memphis Sanitation Strike
Michael Honey, Ethnic, Gender, and Labor Studies, UW Tacoma

Published as Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King�s Last Campaign (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008)
Managing Labor in Our Neoliberal Times: Educated Workers & Career Planning in Late-Socialist China
Lisa Hoffman, Urban Studies, UW Tacoma

Published as "Autonomous Choices and Patriotic Professionalism: On Governmentality in Late-Socialist China," Economy and Society, Vol. 35, No. 4. (November 2006), pp. 550-570

Graduate Student Grants

Bangkok Taxi Drivers: Workers, Migrants and Men in the 'Global' City
Maureen Hickey, Department of Geograpy
Comparative study of the impacts of English, American and Turkish labor movements on state-society relations during the period of initial, national labor federation formation
Brian Mellow, Department of Political Science

2002-2003

Faculty Grants

Union Democracy Reexamined: The Case of the ILWU
Margaret Levi and David Olson, Political Science
Making Insurgent Communities: A Study of Suicide Protest and the Unionization of Taxi Drivers in South Korea
Hyojoung Kim, Department of Sociology
Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar Production in the Age of Emancipation
Moon-Ho Jung, Department of History

Published as Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006)

Graduate Student Grants

Research investigating the sense of belonging by different racial groups in their high-tech workplaces
Meredith Reitman, Department of Geography
Research on post-World War II tenant activism in New York City
Roberta Gold, Department of History
Research on whether unionization has an impact on Teaching Assistant stipends
Kisa Watanabe and Evren Damar

2001-2002

Faculty Grants

Union Democracy Reexamined
Margaret Levi and David Olson, Political Science
Contingent Academic Labor in Washington State's Community Colleges
Dan Jacoby, Economics, UW Bothell
Labor Rights of Sex Workers
Patrick Rivers, American Ethnic Studies
Interpreting Japanese American Labor History in the Northwest Through Historic Properties
Gail Dubrow, Associate Dean, Architecture and Urban Planning

Published as Sento at Sixth and Main: Preserving Landmarks of Japanese American Heritage (Seattle Arts Commission, 2002)

Graduate Student Grants

Negotiating Gender, Work, and Family: Unpacking the Family Wage Gap
Penelope Huang, Department of Sociology
The Impact of Neoliberal Transition Processes on Female Labor in Mexico and Turkey
Izik Ozel, Department of Political Science
Neoliberalism and Democracy? The Gendered Restructuring of Work, Unions and Colombian Public Sphere
Kim Wan Eyck, Department of Geography

2000-2001

Faculty Grants

Work, Landscape, and Culture in the Hispanic Farming Communities of Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado
Greg Hicks, School of Law
Devon Peña, Department of Anthropology
A Labor-based Perspective on Martin Luther King
Michael Honey, African-American, Labor, and Ethnic Studies, UW Tacoma

Graduate Student Grants

The Organization of Production in the Southern California-Tijuana Region
Nicholas Velluzzi, Department of Geography
Postwar Tenant Activism in New York City
Roberta Gold, Department of History
The Role of Unions in Port Competition
Betsi Beem, Department of Political Science
Attitudes of Unemployed Chinese Workers Toward Recent Chinese History
David Davies, Department of Anthropology

Staff Research Grants

The Effectiveness of Non-affiliation: The Coalition of University Employees Representing Classified Staff of the University of California
Karen Long, Fiscal Specialist Supervisor

1999-2000

Faculty Grants

Research exploring the influence of the Newspaper Guild 1937-1941
Roger Simpson, Department of Communications
Research focusing on the relationship between high school student employment and their educational performance
John Robert Warren and Paul C. LePore, Department of Sociology

Graduate Student Grants

Research on gaining a more systematic understanding of the conditions under which transnational litigation on behalf of workers might act as a catalyst for transnational labor organizing
Anne Bloom, Department of Political Science
Research regarding children's gender-specific work patterns
Isabelle Sarton-Miller, Department of Anthropology
'Green Havoc': Environment, Labor, and the State in Costa Rica's Pacific Banana Industry, 1938-1984
Steve Marquart, Department of History
Research in support of Light and Rosenstein's hypothesis of specific demand, that immigration generates specific demands for the services and products of immigrant labor
April Linton Eaton, Department of Sociology

1998-1999

Graduate Student Grants

Research seeking to understand how Pacific Coast salmon cannery labor movements encountered the law during the New Deal and McCarthy eras
Doug Baker, Department of Political Science
Research on gaining a more systematic understanding of the conditions under which transnational litigation on behalf of workers might act as a catalyst for transnational labor organizing
Anne Bloom, Department of Political Science
Fieldwork in the autonomous community of Cataloñia examining the dynamic interdependencies between local labor market institutions and regional economic restructuring and development
Deron Ferguson, Department of Geography
Research exploring the history of industrial engineering from regional perspectives
Moran Tompkins, Department of History

1997-1998

Faculty Grants

Secretary of Labor's Task Force on "Excellence in State and Local Government Through Labor-Management Cooperation"
Jon Brock, Cascade Center, Graduate School of Public Affairs
Research on the work and social culture of the bracero railroad workers contracted to six carriers operating in the Pacific Northwest
Erasmo Gamboa, American Ethnic Studies

Graduate Student Grants

Research on female domestic workers in China
Hairong Yan, Department of Anthropology
The historic significance of Seattle's Waitresses' Union, Local 240
Carole Davison, Urban Planning
Research on the importance of labor market relations between Protestants and Catholics to changing patterns of communal conflict in Northern Ireland
Niall O Murchu, Department of Political Science
The Making of the Second Reconstruction: Race, Class, and Power in Alabama, 1941-1963
Ken Lang, Department of History

1995-1996

Graduate Student Grants

Research on how tactics of organizational dispute affect the development of unions
Doug Baker, Department of Political Science
Research on how neo-liberal reforms in Mexico have affected clientele networks involving skilled labor
Tom Lewis, Department of Political Science
Research on the relations between U.S. and Mexican labor and civil rights groups during the 1930s and 1940s
Gigi Peterson, Department of History
The Making of the Second Reconstruction: Race, Class, and Power in Alabama, 1941-1963
Ken Lang, Department of History

1994-1995

Faculty Grants

A Mexican Immigrant Community on Puget Sound: An Exploratory Study of Labor Market Integration and Community Formation
Guadalupe Friaz, American Ethnic Studies
Labor and Law at the Margins: Alaskan Cannery Workers and the Politics of Legal Mobilization
Michael McCann, Department of Political Science
Oral History Project on E.D. Nixon
Michael Honey, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Tacoma
Transnationalization and Industrial Location: Labor and Local Politics in West Bengal, India
Anthony D'Costa, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Tacoma

Graduate Student Grants

Research on the international politics of labor in the post-Cold War period
Tom Berry, Department of Political Science
Labor in the shipbuilding industry in South Korea
Hwasook Nam, Department of History
Research on labor and political culture in the San Francisco Bay Area in the post-World War II period
Robert Self, Department of History