Past Events

Most European labor markets are structured by industry-wide wage bargaining. We study the relationship between sectoral bargaining and wage inequality by differentiating between wage coordination (i.e., inequality in wage floors) and wage centralization (i.e., inequality in deviations from wage floors). We introduce a novel data set of over 30,000 major German sectoral bargaining agreements between 1950 and 2025 which lets us reconstruct wage coordination for the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. We find that inequality in bargained wage floors declined substantially between 1960 and 2025. This is driven by white collar contracts and the service industry and mainly occurs within-contract. Contracts also become less regionally and demographically differentiated over time. These findings contrast with rising wage inequality during our later study period and show that wage inequality in Germany has not been driven by bargaining fragmentation, but by decentralization.

Inviting all SMLR graduate students to join us for a celebration of YOU! Meet and network with fellow graduate students, enjoy pizza, grab giveaways, explore resources, and chat with Master’s Program Directors Francis Ryan, Hadi El-Farr, and Dave Ferio!

If you're graduating in 2026 (May or August) we invite you to meet with some of our career coaches to discuss your thoughts and plans. SMLR Career Services can assist you in developing a strategy to approach graduation and search for a job! 

Join us on campus at Rutgers for an Open House to learn about the major/minor in Human Resource Management (HRM) and the master's program (MHRM), along with SMLR Honors and Study Abroad options!

If you're graduating in 2026 (May or August) we invite you to meet with some of our career coaches to discuss your thoughts and plans. SMLR Career Services can assist you in developing a strategy to approach graduation and search for a job! 

Join Rutgers LEARN as we celebrate the work of Black women labor historians and union leaders’ organizing and intellectual work to transform the U.S. political economy. We will come together across labor organizations and academic disciplines to discuss Black women’s organizing across time and in multiple sites: unions, social organizations, scholarship, schools, and churches.

Join the Labor Studies and Employment Relations (LSER) department for our upcoming In-Person Open House to learn more about our undergraduate and master’s degree options, along with our 5-year program! Free pizza will be provided!

Join SMLR for our Lunar New year event on Tuesday, 2/17 in the Janice Levin Building Student Lounge on Livingston Campus.

Social drinking and/or eating is both a common human behavior and a verified network generator from a variety of social network research around the world. Yet, its causal consequences are not well-established empirical evidence. To fill in this gap, the present study is designed to examine the causal effect of social drinking/eating networks (SDENs) on measures of generalized and institutional trust. Ongoing analysis of data from the 2017 module of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) shows that there is a great variation in both measures of trust and an individual’s frequency of attendance to SDEN occasions across the 30 ISSP member countries/regions in Americas, Asia, and Europe.

Whether you're looking for a job, internship, or just want to practice networking with employers, we encourage all SMLR undergraduate and graduate students, and alumni to attend this event! Meet with employers to network & learn about opportunities at these various organizations. Recruiters attending would like to share opportunities at their organization.