Ruth Milkman, professor of sociology, CUNY Graduate Center and academic director of the Joseph F. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, spoke on low-wage workers in the United States. Her talk was titled, “Back to the Future? U.S. Labor Organizing in the New Gilded Age.” 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.

Milkman's early research focused on the impact of economic crisis and war on women workers in the 1930s and 1940s and, later, the restructuring of the U.S. automobile industry and its impact on workers and their union in the 1980s and 1990s.  More recently she has written extensively about low-wage immigrant workers in the U.S., analyzing their employment conditions as well as the dynamics of immigrant labor organizing.  She helped lead a multi-city team that produced a widely publicized 2009 study documenting the prevalence of wage theft and violations of other workplace laws in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.  She also recently co-authored a study of California’s paid family leave program, focusing on its impact on employers and workers.

Milkman is author of Gender At Work: The Dynamics Of Job Segregation During World War II (1987); Japan's California Factories: Labor Relations And Economic Globalization (1991); Farewell To The Factory: Auto Workers In The Late 20th Century (1997); and L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers And The Future Of The U.S. Labor Movement (2006).