Dolores Huerta Labor Institute

On Monday, November 9, 2009, Ana Luz González and Ruth Milkman, co-authors of a new study:  BROKEN LAWS, UNPROTECTED WORKERS: VIOLATIONS OF EMPLOYMENT AND LABOR LAWS IN AMERICA’S CITIES, spoke to students and faculty at LA Trade-Technical College about their study.

This study, released on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 documents the shocking extent to which those employees who work for the lowest wages in the country are also cheated out of their already meager compensation—and a disturbing amount of those abuses are perpetrated right here in L.A.  The study, funded by the Ford, Joyce, Haynes and Russell Sage Foundations, documents wage violations, unpaid overtime, intimidation to prevent workers who are injured on the job from filing claims for Worker’s Compensation and retaliation against workers who attempt to assert their legal rights.

The authors gave a compelling presentation and answered questions from the audience.  Many students had questions about their own personal experiences with employment law violations in their workplace.

LA Trade-Technical College served as one of the sites where some of the interviews for the research was conducted.

About the researchers:

 Ana Luz González is a doctoral candidate in Urban Planning at UCLA.  Her work focuses on the labor market status of immigrants and minorities and the role of day labor worker centers in the informal economy.

 Ruth Milkman, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at UCLA and the CUNY Graduate Center, and Associate Director of the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies at CUNY.  Her most recent book is L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006).

 Victor Narro, J.D., is Project Director at the UCLA Downtown Labor Center and a Lecturer in Chicano Studies at UCLA. He has published extensively on labor and immigrant rights issues.

 The study is available at: http://www.unprotectedworkers.org/