Events > Kent Wong
The Labor Education Program of the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations presents two opportunities to hear:
Kent Wong, Director
Director
UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education
Kent Wong teaches Labor Studies and Ethnic Studies. UCLA’s Labor Center has emerged as a dynamic hub of research, education, and policy initiatives. The Center sponsors 300 student internships each year, placing students in cutting edge labor and community organizations throughout the country. He has published on the labor movement, union organizing, immigrant workers, and undocumented immigrant students. He regularly addresses conferences across America.
Kent was previously staff attorney for the Service Employees International Union, representing LA County Workers. He served as the founding president of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO. He also served as the national president of the United Association for Labor Education, and the University and College Labor Education Association. He is a vice president of the California Federation of Teachers, a co-chair of the California Speaker’s Commission on Labor Education, and Kent serves on the Board of Trustees of the National Labor College in Silver Springs, Maryland.
Organizing Immigrant Workers and Students
7 - 8pm on Thursday, March 15 - Rm 109, S. Kedzie Hall
Kent Wong, the UCLA Labor Center Director will discuss LA’s new labor movement and the social justice movement including Occupy LA and Occupy Oakland, with a focus on organizing immigrant workers and students.
Some of the most successful California organizing has taken place among immigrant workers, mainly from Latin America, including janitors, hotel workers, dry wall workers, home care workers, port truckers, and day laborers. Recently, three car wash companies have been organized in LA by a Steelworkers union campaign. The organizing of immigrant workers has also led to significant political mobilizations victories that have transformed the California political landscape.
A new immigrant youth movement has also emerged and immigrant students have organized marches, hunger strikes, and civil disobedience actions risking arrest and deportation. The presentation will also feature recently produced short documentaries capturing the images and energy of immigrant worker and student organizing.
Labor Studies in California: The Changing Role
9 - 10:15am on Friday, March 16 - HRLR Conference Room, 4th Floor, S. Kedzie Hall
Kent Wong, the UCLA Labor Center Director, will discuss how the UCLA Labor Center responded to being under attack by conservative forces. On three separate occasions, former Governor Schwarzenegger took extraordinary steps to eliminate funding for the UCLA and UC Berkeley labor centers. Despite the attacks, both centers survived and thrive.
The UCLA Labor Center built an innovative program that integrates popular education, service learning, and social justice movement building. The center launched the first Spanish language union leadership school in the country, the Black Workers Center to address the job crisis in the black community, the California Construction Academy, which is a creative partnership between construction unions and communities of color, Dream University which is an online college course for immigrant students in partnership with the National Labor College, and Student internship and service learning programs that place 300 student interns in unions and worker centers each year.
The talks are co-sponsored by the Labor Education Program of the SHRLR and the Anthropology Department, College of Social Science, James Madison College, Julian Samora Research Institute, Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives, Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives, the Political Science Department, the
Residential College for the Arts and Humanities, and the Vice Provost for Outreach and Engagement.
For further information, contact Professor John Revitte, HRLR, @ revitte@msu.edu.
Click here to download event flyer
