23 Facts About Ruth Milkman

Ruth Milkman was born on December 18,1954 and is an American sociologist of labor and labor movements.

Ruth Milkman is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and the director of research at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies.

Between 1988 and 2009 Milkman taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she directed the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.

Ruth Milkman's grandparents emigrated to the United States around 1910, and the family's last name was allegedly bestowed on them by an immigration official at Ellis Island.

Ruth Milkman obtained a bachelor's degree in 1975 from Brown University, where created her own major with an emphasis in women's studies.

Ruth Milkman was awarded a Master of Arts in sociology in 1977 and a Ph.

Ruth Milkman was drawn to Berkeley because of the left-wing political activity of the 1960s that had taken place there.

In 1981, Ruth Milkman was appointed an assistant professor, then associate professor, of sociology at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

Ruth Milkman won an appointment as an associate professor at University of California, Los Angeles in 1988, where she became a full professor of sociology.

Ruth Milkman was appointed director of the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations in 2001.

From 2001 to 2004, Ruth Milkman was director of the University of California Institute for Labor and Employment prior to its restructuring as a research fund.

In 2009, Milkman returned to the CUNY Graduate Center, and took up her present position of Research Director at the Joseph S Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies.

Ruth Milkman has a strong interest in the American labor movement and labor history.

Ruth Milkman has published extensively on low-wage workers and the sociology of gender in the US Milkman writes from a "new labor history" perspective.

One of Ruth Milkman's earliest published works, Women, Work and Protest: A Century of US Women's Labor History, was widely praised for its cross-disciplinary focus and for highlighting the important role women played in the American labor movement.

In 2004, Ruth Milkman co-edited Rebuilding Labor: Organizing and Organizers in the New Union Movement with Kim Voss.

Second, Ruth Milkman's analysis of four SEIU Los Angeles-area organizing campaigns concludes that the most effective organizing strategy is a top-down one.

Third, Ruth Milkman argues that the primary factor in the failure of union organizing campaigns is lack of resources rather than employer opposition, legal factors or the failure to use or improper implementation of good organizing tactics.

Ruth Milkman's findings contradict to a significant degree the conclusions of other scholars such as Bronfenbrenner and Juravich, who find that greater levels of worker involvement in union organizing can be equated with a higher degree of union success.

For labor activists, Ruth Milkman's book is controversial because it seems to suggest that union democracy is not an important factor in either union organizing success or in the revitalization of the labor movement.

Ruth Milkman co-authored a 2009 study of low-wage workers in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago which found that these laborers are routinely denied overtime pay and often illegally paid less than the minimum wage.

Ruth Milkman has received a number of honors in her career.

Ruth Milkman has served on the editorial board for a number of scholarly journals, including Feminist Studies, Politics and Society, the American Journal of Sociology, Gender and Society, International Labor and Working-Class History, Contemporary Sociology, the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Industrial Relations and Work and Occupations.