Directory
Milkman, Ruth

Ruth Milkman

Faculty

Distinguished Professor, History
Distinguished Professor, Sociology

Education

Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

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Contact

+1 212-817-8771

rmilkman@gc.cuny.edu

Personal Website

Affiliated Campus(es)

CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies

Ruth Milkman is a sociologist of labor and labor movements who has written on a variety of topics involving work and organized labor in the United States, past and present. Her most recent books are Immigrant Labor and the New Precariat (Polity, 2020) and On Gender, Labor and Inequality (Illinois, 2016).

Her early research focused on the impact on U.S. women workers of economic crisis and war in the 1930s and 1940s. She went on to study the restructuring of the U.S. automobile industry and its impact on workers and their union in the 1980s and 1990s; in that period she also analyzed the labor practices of Japanese-owned factories in California. More recently she has written extensively about low-wage immigrant workers, analyzing their employment conditions as well as the dynamics of immigrant labor organizing. She co-authored a 2013 study of California’s paid family leave program, focusing on its impact on employers and workers.

She served as the 2016 President of the American Sociological Association, where her presidential address focused on Millennial-generation social movements. She has also conducted extensive policy-oriented research on such topics as wage theft, unionization trends, paid sick leave, and the aging workforce. After 21 years as a sociology professor at UCLA, where she directed the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment from 2001 to 2008, she returned to New York City in 2010.

She is currently Distinguished Professor of Sociology at The Graduate Center, CUNY and at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, where she chairs the Labor Studies Department.

Representative Publications

"Gender, Class, and the Gig Economy: The Case of Platform-Based Food Delivery" (with Luke Elliott-Negri, Kathleen Griesbach, and Adam Reich) Critical Sociology, forthcoming.
"Algorithmic Control in Platform Food Delivery Work" (with Kathleen Griesbach, Adam Reich, and Luke Elliott-Negri). Socius, vol. 5: 1-15.
"Immigrants Didn't Kill Your Union," Dissent (Spring 2019), pp. 57-64.
"The World We Have Lost: U.S. Labor in the Obama Years," in Wilbur C. Rich, ed. Looking Back on President Barack Obama's Legacy (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), pp. 115-131.
"Low-Wage Worker Organizing and Advocacy in the USA: Comparing Domestic Workers and Day Laborers," Political Power and Social Theory, vol. 35 (2018)
"Immigrants are not the cause of labour degradation," Nature Human Behavior, 16 April 2018.
"Trump and the Future of U.S. Labor," Novos Estudios (Brazil), vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 99-115
"The Senior Precariat," New Labor Forum, vol. 26, issue 1 (January 2018), pp. 1-8
"Organizing the Academic Precariat in the United States," (with Celeste Atkins, Louis Esparza and Catherine Moran), Global Labor Journal, vol. 9, no. 1 (2018), pp. 76-81.
"Labor Unions and the Great Recession" (with Stephanie Luce), RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, vol. 3, no. 3 (April 2017)
"A New Political Generation: Millennials and the Post-2008 Wave of Protest," American Sociological Review, vol. 82, no. 1 (February 2017)
"The Double Game of Unions and The Labor Movement," in Players and Arenas: The Interactive Dynamics of Protest, eds. James M. Jasper and Jan Wilhelm Duyvendak (Amsterdam Univ. Press, 2015), pp. 169-86.
Review of Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century in the European Journal of Sociology, vol. 55. no. 3 (2014)
"Millennial Movements: Occupy Wall Street and the Dreamers," Dissent, vol. 61, no. 3 (Summer 2014)
"Back to the Future? U.S. Labor in the New Gilded Age," British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 51, no. 4 (December 2013), pp. 645-665.
“‘We Are the Ones Who Are Out in Front’: Women’s Leadership in the Immigrant Rights Movement," (with Veronica Terriquez), Feminist Studies, vol. 38, no. 3 (Fall 2012), pp. 723-752.
“Wage and hour violations in urban labour markets: a comparison of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago,” with Ana Luz Gonzalez and Peter Ikeler, Industrial Relations Journal, vol. 43, no. 5 (Sept. 2012), pp. 378-98.
“L.A.’s Past, America’s Future? The 2006 Immigrants Rights Protests and Their Antecedents,” in Rallying for Immigrant Rights: The Fight for Inclusion in 21st Century America, eds. Kim Voss and Irene Bloemraad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), pp. 201-214.
“Immigrant Workers, Precarious Work, and the U.S. Labor Movement,” Globalizations, vol. 8, no. 3 (June 2011), pp. 361-372.
“Immigrant Workers and the Future of American Labor” ABA Journal of Labor and Employment Law, vol. 26, no. 2 (Winter 2011), pp. 295-310.
“Class Disparities, Market Fundamentalism and Work-Family Policy: Lessons from California,” in Gender Equality: Transforming Family Divisions of Labor, eds. Erik Olin Wright, Janet C. Gornick, and Marcia K. Meyers (New York: Verso, 2009), pp. 339-364.
“Putting Wages Back into Competition: Deunionization and Degradation in Place-Bound Industries,” in The Gloves-Off Economy: Problems and Possibilities at the Bottom of America’s Labor Market, eds. Annette Bernhardt, Heather Boushey, Laura Dresser, and Chris Tilly (Champaign, IL: Labor and Employment Relations Association, 2008), pp. 65-89.
“Two Worlds of Unionism: Women and the New Labor Movement,” in The Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor, ed. Dorothy Sue Cobble (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), pp. 63-80.
“Labor Organizing Among Mexican-Born Workers in the U.S.: Recent Trends and Future Prospects,” Labor Studies Journal, vol. 32, no. 1 (March 2007), pp. 96-112.
“Divided We Stand,” New Labor Forum, vol. 15, no. 1 (Spring 2006), pp. 38-46.
“Win or Lose: Lessons from Two Contrasting Union Campaigns,” Social Policy, vol. 35, no. 2 (2004-05), pp. 43-47.
“Paid Family Leave in California: New Research Findings” (with Eileen Appelbaum) The State of California Labor 2004 (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 45-67.
“California Union Membership: A Turn-of-the-Century Portrait” (with Daisy Rooks) The State of California Labor 2003 (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 3-37.
“Reviving the American Labour Movement: Institutions and Mobilization” (with Richard Hurd and Lowell Turner) European Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 9, no. 1 (March 2003), pp. 99-117.
“Growing Apart: The ‘New Economy’ and Job Polarization in California, 1992-2000” (with Rachel E. Dwyer) The State of California Labor 2002 (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 3-36.
“Justice for Janitors in Los Angeles: Lessons from Three Rounds of Negotiations” (with Christopher L. Erickson, Catherine L. Fisk, Daniel J.B. Mitchell and Kent Wong) British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 40, no. 3 (Sept. 2002), pp. 543-67.
“Organizing Immigrant Workers: Case Studies from Southern California” (with Kent Wong) in Rekindling the Movement: Labor’s Quest for 21st Century Relevance, eds. Lowell Turner, Harry Katz and Richard Hurd (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 99-128.
“The Macrosociology of Paid Domestic Labor” (with Ellen Reese and Benita Roth) Work and Occupations, vol. 25, no. 4 (Nov. 1998), pp. 483-510.
“The Impact of Foreign Investment on US Industrial Relations: The Case of California's Japanese-owned Plants," Economic and Industrial Democracy, vol. 13, no. 2 (May 1992), pp. 151-182.
"Technological Change in an Auto Assembly Plant: The Impact on Workers' Tasks and Skills" (with Cydney Pullman) Work and Occupations, vol. 18, no. 2 (May 1991), pp. 123-146.
“Gender and Trade Unionism in Historical Perspective,” in Women, Politics and Change, eds. Louise Tilly and Patricia Gurin (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1990), pp. 87-107.
“Women's History and the Sears Case,” Feminist Studies, vol. 12, No. 2 (Summer 1986). pp. 375-400.
“Redefining Women's Work: The Sexual Division of Labor in the Auto Industry during World War II,” Feminist Studies, vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer 1982) pp. 337‑372.
"Women's Work and Economic Crisis: Some Lessons of the Great Depression," Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring 1976), pp. 73‑97.

Professional Affiliations and Leadership (2015-present)

Chair, Department of Labor Studies, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies (2020-present)
President, American Sociological Association (2015-2016)

Awards and Honors (2015-present)

Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University (2018-2019)
John Comerford Labor Education Award, from the New York Labor History Association (2016)
Fellow, Advanced Research Collaborative, CUNY Graduate Center (2015)

Courses Taught

Sociology of Labor and Labor Movements
Change and Crisis in Universities
Labor and Inequality: Gender, Race, Class, Immigration and the New Precariat
Labor and Social Movements
Women, Work and Public Policy
Toward a New Labor Movement? Community-Based Organizations, Unions, and Worker Centers in New York City

Contact

+1 212-817-8771

rmilkman@gc.cuny.edu

Personal Website

Affiliated Campus(es)

CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies

Books

Immigrant Labor and the New Precariat

by Ruth Milkman Distinguished Professor, History, Distinguished Professor, Sociology

Immigration has been a contentious issue for decades, but in the twenty-first century it has moved to center stage, propelled by an immigrant threat narrative that blames foreign-born workers, and especially the undocumented, for the collapsing living standards of American workers. According to that narrative, if immigration were summarily curtailed, border security established, and ""illegal aliens"" removed, the American Dream would be restored.

In this book, Ruth Milkman demonstrates that immigration is not the cause of economic precarity and growing inequality, as Trump and other promoters of the immigrant threat narrative claim. Rather, the influx of low-wage immigrants since the 1970s was a consequence of concerted employer efforts to weaken labor unions, along with neoliberal policies fostering outsourcing, deregulation, and skyrocketing inequality.

These dynamics have remained largely invisible to the public. The justifiable anger of US-born workers whose jobs have been eliminated or degraded has been tragically misdirected, with even some liberal voices recently advocating immigration restriction. This provocative book argues that progressives should instead challenge right-wing populism, redirecting workers' anger toward employers and political elites, demanding upgraded jobs for foreign-born and US-born workers alike, along with public policies to reduce inequality.

Published July 2020
Wiley, 2020

On Gender, Labor, and Inequality

University of Illinois Press, 2016

by Ruth Milkman Distinguished Professor, History, Distinguished Professor, Sociology

Ruth Milkman's groundbreaking research in women's labor history has contributed important perspectives on work and unionism in the United States. On Gender, Labor, and Inequality presents four decades of Milkman's essential writings, tracing the parallel evolutions of her ideas and the field she helped define. Milkman's introduction frames a career-spanning scholarly project: her interrogation of historical and contemporary intersections of class and gender inequalities in the workplace, and the efforts to challenge those inequalities. Early chapters focus on her pioneering work on women's labor during the Great Depression and the World War II years. In the book's second half, Milkman turns to the past fifty years, a period that saw a dramatic decline in gender inequality even as growing class imbalances created greater-than-ever class disparity among women. She concludes with a previously unpublished essay comparing the impact of the Great Depression and the Great Recession on women workers.

Published May 2016

New Labor in New York: Precarious Workers and the Future of the Labor Movement

by Ruth Milkman Distinguished Professor, History, Distinguished Professor, Sociology

RUTH MILKMAN AND ED OTT, EDS.

While New York is the nation's most highly unionized large city, its unions, especially in the private sector, are in steady decline, and the city today is home to a large and growing 'precariat': workers with little or no employment security. In thirteen fine-grained case studies, this book documents the efforts of community-based worker centers to organize this expanding segment of the workforce. These campaigns involve taxi drivers, street vendors, domestic workers, and middle-strata freelancers, all of whom are excluded from basic employment laws, as well as supermarket, retail, and restaurant workers. The book offers a richly detailed portrait of the city's new labor movement and recent efforts to expand it on a national scale. Ruth Milkman is a professor of sociology at the Graduate Center; contributors include doctoral students and alumni from GC programs in sociology, anthropology, earth and environmental sciences, history, political science, and public health.

Published March 2014
Cornell University Press, 2014

Unfinished Business: Paid Family Leave in California and the Future of U.S. Work-Family Policy

by Ruth Milkman Distinguished Professor, History, Distinguished Professor, Sociology

RUTH MILKMAN AND EILEEN APPELBAUM

This book documents the history and impact of California's paid family leave program, which began in 2004 and was the first of its kind in the United States. Drawing on original data from fieldwork and surveys of employers, workers, and the larger California adult population, the authors analyze in detail the effect of the state's landmark paid family leave on employers and workers. They also explore the implications of California's experience for the national debate about work-family policies. While business interests argue that paid family leave and similar programs impose significant costs and burdens on employers, the majority of California employers surveyed reported that its impact on productivity, profitability, and performance was negligible or positive. The authors lay out lessons for advocates in other states and localities.

Published November 2013
Cornell University Press, 2013