UC Merced wins multi-million dollar award, calling it one of the school’s largest ever
UC Merced won a $6.5 million grant to fund a labor rights resource center in the central San Joaquin Valley.
In a news release announcing the award Monday, UC Merced officials called the award from the James Irvine Foundation one of the largest ever since the university opened in 2005.
The grant is intended to fund a Worker Resource Center to further public education on workers’ rights in California’s Central Valley. The center is also meant to convene a Central Valley Worker Collaborative to educate and bring together workers and labor advocates.
“Valley workers are on the frontlines of global economic and environmental challenges,” Ana Padilla, executive director of the Community and Labor Center, said in a news release. “This award will support the center in building worker power and addressing the threats posed by a lack of workplace health and safety standards, a lack of a safety net, and the increasing risks of climate disaster.”
The $6.5 million grant comes from the James Irvine Foundation’s “Priority Communities” initiative, a $135 million effort the foundation says aims to “create and protect more good jobs that offer family-sustaining wages, benefits, and advancement opportunities for workers in low-wage jobs.”
The Community and Labor Center at UC Merced has only been around since 2020 but has “quickly established itself as the largest labor center serving a rural region in the U.S.,” according to the university’s statement.
Its past work includes holding pop-up vaccine clinics and workers’ rights informational sessions in rural areas across the valley in summer 2021 with the help of community partners. The center did so via “mobile caravans,” which aimed to bring resources to farmworkers as opposed to asking them to travel.
The center also regularly publishes research and policy reports on topics such as the need for an unemployment benefit system for undocumented workers in California.
The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Learn about The Bee’s Education Lab at its website.
