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The University of California Los Angeles Labor Center was created in 1964 and was first given the name of the Center for Labor Research and Education.

Background and Origin
In 1945, shortly after the end of World War II, industrial relations programs were being created around many major universities. The University of California Los Angeles and the University of Berkeley, California set up industrial relations programs under the initiative of Governor Earl Warren. In 1964, the Center for Labor Research and Education was created at UCLA by a joint labor university committee. the joint labor university committee was a California state wide committee that enacted the creation of various labor centers in major universities. The mission and reason for creation of the UCLA Center for Labor Research was to highlight key issues such as job displacement, the needs of white collar unions, reducing hours of work, and the problems of unemployment. Furthermore, the UCLA Labor Center was able to expand its resources and open a labor center in Downtown Los Angeles in 2002. Overlooking MacArthur Park, the Downtown extension was enacted to help serve the community members of the greater Los Angeles area. With a diverse multicultural surrounding, Downtown Los Angeles served as a prime placement for the labor center. The Downtown labor center also serves as a collaborative resource for unions work centers, and helping the broader community of Los Angeles.

History
With many labor centers, also known as worker centers, focusing on the auto industry and Los Angeles' economy focus on aerospace technologies after ww II, The UCLA Labor Center acted as a forerunner for health and welfare plans for laborers. In 1979, the labor center decided that they were going to create programs focusing more in the area of health and safety, which lead to the creation of their sister program, the Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program (LOSH). The growth of the public sector and the expansion of growing jobs also led to more expansive research and educational programs in the fields of health and safety.

Current Work
The UCLA Labor Center is currently led by director Kent Wong, who has been the director since the early 2000's. Under his direction, the UCLA Labor Center has experienced the largest growth in staff and funding since its creation nearly 50 years ago. The center also created the Institute for Labor Employment (IRLE) in 2000, which supports research on employment and labor topics to faculty and graduate students of UCLA. The creation of the IRLE also led to the development of the Downtown Labor Center, which acts as a bridge between UCLA faculty staff and students to connect with traditional labor movements,immigrant communities, and worker movements around the world. The Downtown Labor Center also serves to support student internships, promote popular educational programs, and innovative worker education. In 2008 the center also enacted the National Day Labor Organization Network as a part of their office spaces in order to allow others to gather more information about labor organizing.

Programing
The UCLA Labor Center has developed many additional programs to fulfill its mission to connect UCLA and Southern Californian working-class communities.
 * The Community Scholars Program and the Labor Summer Research Internship Program initiated in 2001, are joint initiative programs created by the UCLA urban planning department and the labor center in order to host internships for students and advance research for topics in labor and urban planning. Many of these interns serve as young activist and joined the movement in fighting for social equality with in the social justice movement.
 * The Community Scholars Program was created in 1991 and brings labor and community leaders to UCLA's campus to create research with students and faculty workers.

Projects
The UCLA Labor Center has created various projects in order to expand its outreaching to the greater community of Los Angeles.
 * The Dream Resource Center was created to help promote equal access to higher education as well as advocate for access to citizenship.
 * Created on the basis that the global community must make an effort to come together and fight for equal working rights the Global Solidarity Project is an effort to gather various labor worker leaders, scholars, and activist to address frequent labor worker issues in the United States, the Pacific Rim, and Mexico. The Dream Resource Center also hosts multinational conferences led by the Institute for Transnational Social Change in order to bring labor activist and experts in the field of labor equalities together. Along with research on international free-trade agreements the Dream Resource Center has also done work on the international labor delegation between The United States, China, and Vietnam.
 * The Los Angeles Black Workers Center (LBC) was created in order to address the unemployment crisis facing African American workers. The Los Angeles Black Workers Center is the only organization in the nation where students, scholars, and workers gather together in order to solve the problem of unemployment rates facing the African American community.
 * The Rework Institute for Worker Justice conducts research and creates partnerships in order to create relationships between worker centers and unions. Specifically, they have created a worker center capacity building which uses research, policy analysis, and technical assistance in order to expand worker centers in a wide range of fields. These fields include garment, domestic, taxi, restaurant work, and construction. In order to advance their work, the Rework Institute for Justice Workers also partners with local Los Angeles worker agencies.