Current Research Programs
Washington State Labor Research
For the first time in the 2005-07 biennium, the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies received funding from the Washington State Legislature to support research by UW faculty on labor force issues in Washington State. This mandate calls for research to have direct policy implications. A number of exciting projects have already been completed under this program, and more great work is currently underway. You can read or print the papers produced so far by clicking on the titles below. For information how to apply, click here.
- Economic Restructuring, Policy Change, and the Impacts on Labor in the Forest Products Industry: Implications for Washington State through a Cascadian Lens, Brendan Sweeney, Department of Geography, University of Washington
- Structural and Geographic Shifts in the Warehousing Industry: A benchmark report from a Puget Sound Perspective, Derik Andreoli & Anne Goodchild, Department of Geography & Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington
- Washington State Policy and the Demand for Part-Time Faculty at Community Colleges, Dan Jacoby, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, University of Washington, Bothell
- Freedom of Expression of Farm Workers, April B. Brinkman, Urban Studies Program, University of Washington, Tacoma
- How Do Computers and Internet Affect Employee Compensation?, Ming Fan, Debabrata Dey, and Gang Peng, Department of Information Systems & Operations Management, Business School, University of Washington
- An Examination of Longitudinal Attrition, Retention and Mobility Rates of Beginning Teachers in Washington State, Margaret Plecki, Ana Elfers, and Michael Knapp, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, College of Education, University of Washington
- Overlooked and Undercounted: Wages, Work, and Poverty in Washington State, Diana Pearce, Center for Women’s Welfare, University of Washington School of Social Work
- Anticipating The Impacts Of A Proposed ‘Tip Penalty’ On Front-Line Workers In Washington State’s Restaurant Industry, Anna Haley-Lock, University of Washington School of Social Work
- Healthy and Safe Work for Day Laborers: A participatory approach to turning research into practice, Noah Seixas, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington and Janice Camp, Environmental Health, University of Washington
Research Currently Underway
The following projects have been funded for the 2008-2009 academic year:
- ILWU Contract Negotiations: The Confluence of State-Level Politics, Economics and Labor, Margaret Levi, Department of Political Science, University of Washington
- Latinos, Labor, and New Campaign Dynamics, Matt Barreto, Department of Political Science, University of Washington
- Mapping the Balance Between Earning and Care-giving: The Space-Time Constraints and Workplace Flexibility of Urban Professionals, Kim England, Department of Geography & Anna Haley-Lock, School of Social Work, University of Washington
Working Groups
This research program supports groups of UW faculty who come together around a particular topic. It is also intended to draw on the expertise of the Bridges Center's Visiting Committee members, who come from a wide range of backgrounds and labor and social justice organizations. Working Groups are required to include at least one member of that committee. These groups will be funded for up to three years by the Center, and will produce any number of different types of educational resources and events. These might include conferences, websites, publications, seminars, books and articles, etc. The funding from the Bridges Center is intended to be seed money, putting these working groups in position to seek additional funding both from sources here at the UW, and from foundations. To date, the Center has funded five Working Groups:
- Union Democracy Reexamined: depts.washington.edu/ilwu
- Race, Radicalism, and Labor: Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project
- Race, Class, and Work-Life Balance: Exploring Intersectionality in the Domains of Work and Care: depts.washington.edu/sswweb/bridgesctr
- Labor, Knowledge, and the Economy
- Waterfront Workers History Project
Past Research Programs
Working Papers
The Bridges Center published two series of working papers. Papers in the Comparative Labor History Series were produced by faculty teaching in the intensive Summer Program in Comparative Labor History offered jointly through the Departments of History and Political Science at the University of Washington. The summer program was co-sponsored by the Bridges Center. The Occasional Paper Series reproduced important lectures and scholarly papers sponsored by the Bridges Center during the academic year. The two inaugural papers in this series were originally presented at a conference entitled "Harry Bridges and the Tradition of Dissent Among Waterfront Workers", at the University of Washington, January 28, 1994.
Labor-Management Cooperation Research
From summer of 1998 through winter of 2001, the Bridges Center worked in conjunction with the Cascade Center for Public Service at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs on a project funded by the Ford Foundation to encourage and develop the use of cooperative techniques in public sector labor-management relations as one means to improve the quality of work life and service delivery. The project's main objective was to build on the principles of improving labor-management relationships described in a report by the U.S. Secretary of Labor's Task Force on Excellence in State and Local Government.
We began with an ambitious agenda and have thus far produced some exciting results. Two undergraduate students, Lara Tilmanis and Ebrima Wadda, undertook a research project that allowed us to update the status of many of the nation-wide experiments in labor-management cooperation that were highlighted in the Task Force's report. Other projects included: participation in Bridges Center activities, such as the Metro Unionism and STRIKES! Conferences; several written papers and articles; a conference jointly sponsored by our project, the U.S. Department of Labor, Cornell University Institute for Labor Relations, and the Chicago-Kent Law School in April 2000; collaboration with the Wagner School at New York University to develop teaching materials for use by labor and public administration programs; and the development of a web site containing information on improving labor-management relationships in the public sector.
Living Wage Project
Bridges Chair Emeriti, David Olson and Margaret Levi, led a research program focusing on the living wage movement in the U.S. Funded by a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation, the "Living Wage Project" examined 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.