REGISTER
In this panel, an interdisciplinary group of UC Berkeley graduate students will explore the evolving dynamics of work, management, and labor organization. The panel will feature research by three current Berkeley PhD students: William Darwell (Jurisprudence and Social Policy), Kristy Kim (Economics), and Vera Parra (Sociology). The panel will be moderated by John Logan, Visiting Scholar at the UC Labor Center.
Their studies focus on the impact of pension systems on workforce participation, labor union organizing in automotive supply chains across North America, and how different political and economic systems influence workplace management practices.
Co-sponsored by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE), the UC Berkeley Labor Center, and the Berkeley Law Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy.
Panelists
William Darwall is a PhD candidate in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at Berkeley Law working on social, political, and legal theory of work, the workplace, and its management. Will’s dissertation employs a critical historical account of the emergence and ongoing development of the science of management to reframe and reconstruct normative debates over the legitimacy and appropriate legal regulation of workplace hierarchy, authority, and control. Special attention, here, is paid to the present and future of techniques and technologies of workplace management, as the workplace as we know it dissipates, if not disappears. Prior to graduate work, Will co-founded and managed a worker-cooperative cafe and bar in Philadelphia, PA.
Kristy Kim, a PhD Candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Economics, researches issues at the intersection of public and behavioral economics. Her job market paper studies how changes in retirement benefits affect labor supply and workforce composition. Her other research focuses on the distributional impacts on tax-preferred property inheritances and behavioral welfare measures.
Vera Parra, a PhD Student in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, interested in labor history, political economy, and organizing in the 21st century. She is researching the recent history of auto industry organizing drives, both in the US and Mexico. She is interested in examining how green industrial policy– in particular the transition to EVs and attempts to secure a North American supply chain– shape organizing conditions on both sides of the border.
John Logan (moderator) is Professor and Director of Labor Studies at San Francisco State University and a Visiting Scholar at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. He is an expert on the anti-union industry and anti-union legislation in the U.S., and comparative labor issues, particularly how multinational companies treat employees and unions differently in the U.S. compared to European countries.