Trailblazing Researcher Put a “Spotlight” on Unions

Unions have long hired researchers, “but oftentimes, that research was akin to throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks,” says UCLA Associate Professor Chris Zepeda-Millán.

Then along came Kate Bronfenbrenner, A&S ’76, Ph.D. ’93.

“Kate’s most important contribution to both labor studies and the labor movement is that she helped teach us to think strategically about research, literally helping create a step-by-step template for how to research all the major aspects of corporate targets, and how to apply that knowledge to comprehensive organizing campaigns,” Zepeda-Millán says.

“Rather than merely being a cheerleader for labor, she was one of the first scholars to produce critical and rigorous quantitative research demonstrating that, despite the structural forces leading to the decline of the labor movement, there was a lot unions could do to hold off and arguably reverse some of this decline. She put the spotlight not only on the devastating effects of employer union-busting tactics, but also on unions themselves, showing how they could win again if they were willing to put in the resources and effort,” says Zepeda-Millán, A&S Ph.D. ’11, chair of UCLA’s Labor Studies Program and faculty director of the UCLA Strategic Research Lab.

“There’s no union staff researcher or strategic research student in the country who hasn’t read and doesn’t know the name Kate Bronfenbrenner – she’s a legend,” says Zepeda-Millán.

Bronfenbrenner retired this year as senior lecturer and labor education research director at the ILR School. For three decades, she trained thousands of Cornellians and students of the Cornell/AFL-CIO Strategic Corporate Research Summer School. 

They learned how to do the painstaking empirical research on union and corporate strategies around organizing and bargaining in a global economy that Bronfenbrenner helped pioneer in the labor sphere, beginning when she was an ILR doctoral student.

Bronfenbrenner’s first jobs after graduating from Cornell’s College of Arts & Sciences in 1976 with a sociology degree were in organizing for unions and worker rights.

In congressional hearings, think tanks, union halls, National Labor Relations Board rule change meetings, top media and elsewhere, her findings in reports such as “Blueprint for Change: A National Assessment of Winning Union Organizing Strategies” have helped frame the conversation about workers’ rights for nearly 30 years.

And will continue to do so, says AFL-CIO Senior Counsel Craig Becker. “In the current hostile environment, unions will have to use every tool available to defend and exercise the right to organize. Many of the tools they will reach for will be those developed by Kate and those she has taught union staff and organizers how to use.”

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, discovered her work as an undergraduate at Northwestern University and sought out her research on employer surveillance tactics when he worked for the U.S. Labor Department during the Biden-Harris Administration.

Bronfenbrenner’s documentation about the dramatic increase in electronic worker monitoring “informed our work about how to better regulate these tools and drew attention to how monitoring productivity could undermine workers’ rights,” Hertel-Fernandez says. “We were dying to get our hands on the latest numbers from her survey; it was really important to ground the policies we wanted to advance, in particular to estimate the growing use of electronic tools.”

Her rigorous empirical work informed policymakers, academics, think tanks and advocacy groups, and it has helped steer unions in fresh directions, he says. “She’s not just focused on documenting problems, but shows how unions can respond. Her work is one of those foundational citations for people talking about obstacles unions face.”

According to Hertel-Fernandez, questions of labor have been neglected across academic disciplines for four decades. “But there has been a surge in recent years, and I credit Kate for supporting those junior scholars,” says Hertel-Fernandez. “Kate was always so laser-focused on how we reach the next generation of labor scholars, including from HBCUs [Historically Black Colleges and Universities].”

Her most recently published paper, “Advancing Black Workers in the South,” with Algernon Austin of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, involved five HBCUs and included research analysis by David Grant II, M.S. ’25, and Jamil Johnson, M.S. ’25.

A Mentor for Generations of ILRies

Working with students to publish research is a trademark of Bronfenbrenner’s career; she hired up to a dozen undergraduate and graduate student researchers every year.

Writers Guild of America West Executive Director Ellen Stutzman ’04, who negotiated a victory for 11,000 television writers in 2023, was one of them.

“Kate is really the reason I’m in the labor movement. She was very willing to give her time to help you grow. There were other great professors in the ILR School who shaped my work, too, but Kate was always so close to the students. She helped us start the Labor Roundtable. Students have such love and admiration for her,” Stutzman says.

Bronfenbrenner’s influence is felt across the labor movement, Stutzman adds. “Kate was so important in understanding how the labor movement had to change to survive when companies started moving overseas, and the relationship between labor and capitalism changed. Workers and unions had to learn how to run campaigns to pressure companies in new ways.”

“You get into this work because you believe unions are one of the best ways to engage in social and economic change, to bring collective power to bear on a situation. Kate’s an example of dedicating her life’s work to that.”

Labor lawyer Michael Iadevaia ’16, J.D. ’19, worked as a research assistant updating Bronfenbrenner’s groundbreaking 2009 study, “No Holds Barred—The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing.”

“Nobody was doing the work she was doing. This unique work transcended the academic sphere and impacted policy and the way the labor movement operates. She knew this was work we had to get right because it was going to impact a lot of stakeholders,” Iadevaia says.

“She ushered in new thinking. She called balls and strikes, said it the way it was, even if it wasn’t the most popular thing.”

“The biggest lesson I learned from her was the importance of organizing,” Iadevaia says. “Even in my job today, I always hear her voice when I advise clients, explaining how important organizing is – you can’t just rely on the law to achieve positive outcomes for the labor movement. I didn’t always understand what she meant, but seeing it play out as a lawyer in advising union clients on recognition campaigns and contract disputes, the law has a lot of limitations that people don’t think about.”

Social Turmoil of 1968 Helped Shape a Teen’s Future

Bronfenbrenner’s path was inspired by the Civil Rights Movement. “Everything was happening as I became a teenager,” she says. “I knew I was going to do something in social justice.”

In 1968, she was 16 and traveling the world, visiting the Soviet Union, Africa, Asia and Europe with her parents and younger brother, and assisting her father, psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner, with his research. “He instilled in me that when you do research, it has to be done right, and it has to be research that helps society.”

Bronfenbrenner swore she would never end up in academia, but after an assault during a break-in to her apartment left her with lifelong spinal injuries, the physical demands of organizing work became difficult.

She began studying for a Ph.D. at ILR in hopes of ultimately empowering people to make change in their lives. Her dissertation, “Seeds of Resurgence: Successful Union Strategies for Winning Certification Elections and First Contracts in the 1980’s and Beyond,” set the stage for nine more major research projects and heightened her profile.

“Nobody had looked at this before. I didn’t realize what a big thing it was until it was published,” she says. “There was an immediate pushback from unions – ‘Oh, my god, she’s saying we can do better’ – and enormous pushback from corporations.”

“Sometimes, if you’re going to speak truth to power, it’s hard and you have to be willing to face the consequences. When you challenge the paradigm, you have to work twice as hard and make sure your method is tight,” says Bronfenbrenner, known for her commitment to mentoring students and union professionals of color.

“I love teaching, I love my students. I want them to succeed, and I believe they will carry on, do better and more than I did.

“I haven’t changed the world. The labor movement is still struggling. Employers are more powerful than ever. Research alone doesn’t change the world, but I’ve tried to inform the debate.”

She has and will continue to do so through the thousands she has trained, says AFL-CIO Director of Growth Strategies May Kyi.

“Many of these individuals now lead research and organizing departments and campaigns across the labor movement. The shared language, analytical rigor and strategic grounding they carry with them are a direct result of her teaching and mentorship.”