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SUMMER 2023 NEWSLETTER

This past Spring Quarter, the Blum Center hosted its first combined research symposium featuring original UCSB faculty and student projects centered on The Dr. U.S. Awathi Initiative in Cooperative Economics, and the Central Coast Regional Equity Initiative. This is our inaugural year featuring Central Coast Regional Equity research at UCSB and our second year supporting Cooperative Economics projects, and we invite you to learn more about these respective presentations in the newsletter.

We are also pleased to announce the 2023/24 Central Coast Regional Equity awardees, and Cooperative Economics awardees, for the up-coming year. UCSB faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students are tackling an array of issues including California essential workers’ access to legal knowledge, undocumented high school students’ funding for secondary education, gendered labor markets in post-socialist states, the role of economic democracy within social networks, home care cooperatives, democratic decision-making in the classroom, the power of queer bookstores and transnational networks, LGBT+ publishing opportunities in Brazil, and network support within BIPOC farmer communities.

Please use this link to access the full newsletter.

In Honor of Labor Day, September 4th, 2023

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Hot Union Summer & California Union Membership

UC Berkeley Labor Center's recent analysis of U.S. Census data reflects major shifts in the demographics of organized labor over the past twenty years with the uptake that "it’s not your grandfather’s union anymore."

Today, "at least half of all of California’s 2.5 million union members are women and that the majority of all union workers are people of color. By contrast, 20 years ago the typical union member in California was a white man. This shift in the portrait of union membership comes as a 'hot union summer' across the state rolls into what promises to be an equally militant fall, with public support for unions higher than it has been since the 1960s."

Learn more about this labor union phenomenon by accessing the California Union Membership and Coverage: 2023 Chartbook.

Now Hiring! Blum Center & Labor Center Undergraduate Student Assistants

We are now recruiting two Undergraduate Student Assistants for the 2023-24 AY! One position is with the Blum Center, and the other is position is with the Labor Center. Please see below for a brief overview of these positions, and visit Handshake for the full descriptions and to submit your application.

For questions, please contact: Kashia Arnold, Assistant Director, UCSB Blum Center (karnold@ucsb.edu)

** Application deadline: Friday, September 8th at 11:55PM PST in Handshake

2023-24 Cooperative Economics Awardees

The Blum Center is pleased to announce our 2023-24 Cooperative Economics Awardees. Learn more about their projects! A symposium featuring their work to follow in Spring 2024.

2023-24 Central Coast Regional Equity Awardees

The Blum Center is pleased to announce our 2023-24 Central Coast Regional Equity Awardees. Learn more about their projects! A symposium featuring their work to follow in Spring 2024.

Professor Emeritus Nelson Lichtenstein publishes Op-Ed in LA Times about the SAG-AFTRA actor's strike and LA Labor Movement

"Southern California unions and the working people they represent have become the vanguard of the American labor movement. About half of the big strikes in the U.S.this year have taken place in California, with the most consequential centered in Los Angeles — now including the actors’ strike announced by SAG-AFTRA on Thursday.

The members of SAG-AFTRA will join tens of thousands of hotel workers and screenwriters on strike, following big work stoppages just months ago by workers in L.A.’s public schools and at University of California campuses. Labor’s bargaining ambitions are backstopped by a sense of militancy and solidarity not seen in decades.

How did we get here, when for most of the last century Los Angeles was a union backwater embedded in a region synonymous with a sun-drenched suburbia and a conservative, hegemonic business leadership? It was the 'open shop capital of America.'”

Use link to read on.