Cuts endanger center

On a scorching Friday afternoon, the UCLA Downtown Labor Center
seems bustling. There are meetings going on in different conference
rooms, members of a local union stream in and out, and the
directors and staff all seem to be working on different
projects.

But activity is not unusual for the center. Less than five
minutes from both Little Armenia and Koreatown, the 6,000 square
foot building overlooks MacArthur Park and serves as a university
outpost in downtown Los Angeles.

“The downtown labor center is maybe the sterling example
of the chancellor’s UCLA in L.A. initiative. We are literally
in L.A., here in the heart of L.A.,” said Gary Blasi,
director of UCLA’s Institute of Industrial Relations.
“From the perspective here, next to MacArthur Park, the
university looks a lot more like UCLA and less like UC
Westwood.”

Blasi is one of three directors helping lead the downtown center
through a period of potential budget cuts. For the second year in a
row, funding for the $3.8 million budget for University of
California labor studies programs might be eliminated.

Staff at the downtown labor center say their location is
necessary to facilitate the teaching and research of working people
““ their core mission.

“It would be hard to do the kind of work we do on campus
(and not downtown). It would be impossible. The UCLA campus is just
way out there. It’s so inaccessible to community groups and
workers and advocates. But here at the downtown labor center we
have the physical central space where we can make that
happen,” said Victor Narro, program director at the
center.

Potential funding cuts could dismantle the downtown center as
well as on-campus labor centers, Narro said.

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed his 2005-2006 state
budget in January, funding for labor studies had been left out.

“This is a budget compelled by the necessity to bring our
expenditures under control after they have been set on a course of
increases outstripping the increases in our revenues,” wrote
Tom Campbell, Schwarzenegger’s director of finance, in a
January statement.

“Our mission is to work with workers, to do research and
education on a large segment of society, who are working-class
people, who pay a lot of taxes in this state,” said staff
director Larry Frank.

Directors at the center said erasure of their budget could be
devastating, resulting in the elimination of most of their
programs, such as Spanish-language or African American Union
leadership schools that give workers tools and information to
organize their communities; conferences such as the upcoming
“Is Wal-Mart Good for America?” convention on June 4;
research grants for students and faculty; and a summer institute
that places students in service learning jobs, among others.

Former Gov. Gray Davis helped open the downtown center in 2002,
but now legislators interested in dismantling labor studies at the
UC have found a sympathetic ear, Frank said, adding that threats of
elimination are not about solving budget crises, but rather
furthering political agendas.

“We become a bargaining chip between the governor, the
Republicans and the Democrats. And we’re such a small item;
it’s not about solving the budget problems,” Frank
said.

Schwarzenegger first proposed cutting the entire labor studies
budget in 2004, but after lengthy lobbying efforts the funding was
restored. Only a year later in January, Schwarzenegger said he
would not include labor studies in the new budget.

Directors at the downtown center feel the governor is
contributing to partisan attacks on education.

“Nationwide, part of the new conservative agenda is to
destroy any kind of subsidies funded for labor studies,”
Narro said. “What’s happening to us is happening
throughout the country. It’s a conservative assault on labor
studies programs. … I think a lot of that has to do with the
assault on unions and working class issues. Unfortunately
we’re one of the victims of that assault, that conservative
agenda.”

Chancellor Albert Carnesale said the perception of the labor
center is that they are an institution that works closely with
liberal unions.

“Their symbolism, and I’m talking about the
perception, whether or not it’s the reality doesn’t
really matter, is closely related to unions. That has its pros and
cons,” Carnesale said. “What’s happened, though,
is that it’s a political act that is reducing the funding.
And so to get in the middle of that is to get in the middle of
politics.”

Blasi said that stereotype of the labor center is unfair and
doesn’t give credit to the amount of work and research that
has been done.

“We’re not really in the business of supporting or
opposing unions; we’re in the business of researching and
doing education about what the truth is,” Blasi said.
“(The labor center has) been incorrectly portrayed as just a
part of the university that provides a service to unions. The
reality is that we do research and education on issues that affect
working people, including people in unions, of course, but also
including other people.”

Blasi said he also thought the threats of erasure was an attack
on academic freedom.

“If this attack succeeds, it will establish a precedent
wherein any politician, whether Democrat or Republican, can decide
that they don’t like a whole area of research at the
university and take steps to end it. Today it may be labor studies,
next time it may be AIDS research or Chicano studies,” Blasi
said.