Announcing 2025-2026 Washington State Labor Research Grant Recipients

The Impact of Ecosystem Changes, Labor, Immigration, and Fisheries Policy on Migrant Tuna Fishers in the North Pacific Ocean and U.S. West Coast

Justin Hirsch, Master's Student, School of Marine and Environmental Affairs and the Jackson School of International Studies

Substantial literature documents labor and human rights violations in Asian fisheries. While important, this literature ignores similar practices much closer to home. A citizenship exception in U.S. law allows non-citizens to work aboard U.S. commercial vessels fishing for highly migratory species (HMS), including albacore tuna. Today, Washington state leads Oregon and California in albacore landings, and migrant fishers primarily from the Philippines comprise a significant portion of the labor force aboard vessels that land albacore at U.S. Pacific coast ports. However, U.S. immigration law excludes these lawful migrant workers from visa eligibility, effectively confining migrant fishers aboard small vessels for the duration of their often years-long employment. With limited or no access to shore-based legal resources, medical care, migration, and repatriation, fishers complain of alleged debt-bondage, fraudulent and deceptive labor contracting, abandonment, and other conditions resembling labor trafficking/forced labor/modern slavery.

Labor Issues of Chinese Migrant Massage Parlor Workers in King County

Shuxuan Zhou, Affiliated Faculty, Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies

This project is an action-oriented collaboration with Massage Parlor Organizing Project (MPOP) to analyze MPOP’s outreach log and oral history data and to map out the labor conditions and potential organizing strategies in the massage industry in the greater Seattle area.

Understanding and Honoring the Work of Precaritized Academic Workers in a Time of AI

Joice Tang, PhD Student, Human Centered Design and Engineering

This project seeks to further understand varied (and sometimes conflicting) imaginaries of how AI might change the university as a workplace and how they relate to unionized academic workers’ understandings and experiences of their roles in the university, especially as AI technologies become increasingly prevalent in both teaching, learning, and research in higher education. This project hopes to better understand academic workers’ current relationships to AI to inform what they might need to fight for at and away from the bargaining table when considering the potential impact of new technologies.

Factors Associated with Indigenous Workers' Take Up of Washington Paid Family and Medical Leave

Tess Abrahamson-Richards, PhD Candidate, Social Welfare, School of Social Work

This project digs more deeply into low eligibility and take-up rates of Washington’s Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML) program among American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (NHPI) birthing parents. Building on prior qualitative and quantitative research, the study will utilize merged administrative data from 2020-2023 – including birth records, wage reports, and PFML usage data – to analyze disparities by race, geography, wage level, and job protection status. Findings are intended to inform targeted outreach to Indigenous communities and improved policy implementation strategies.

Alone But Not Forgotten: Centering Safety and Mental Health for Isolated Janitors in Washington State

Stefani Florez-Acevedo, PhD Candidate,
Health Systems and Population Health, School of Public Health

Janitors, particularly those who work alone, face increased risks to their physical and mental health due to isolation, hazardous working conditions, and systemic inequities rooted in structural racism and economic insecurity. This largely immigrant and racially marginalized workforce operates in invisible and often unsupervised roles, making it difficult to access support during emergencies and increasing their vulnerability to injury, violence, and mental health challenges. In collaboration with the SEIU 6 Property Services NW and the Safety and Health Assessment Research Program (SHARP) at the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries, this research centers worker voices in all phases, from design to dissemination, ensuring that the findings directly support advocacy for safer, more equitable workplaces.

Understanding Agricultural Worker and Supervisor Perspectives on Implementation of Washington State’s Outdoor Heat Rule

Maria Blancas, PhD, MPH (PI), Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences​, June Spector, MD, MPH (PI), Alejandra Silva Hernández, MPH, Research Coordinator

Cassandra Sanchez-Franco (Undergraduate Student Research Assistant)
This project examines how Washington’s 2023 Outdoor Heat Exposure Rule is being implemented and experienced by agricultural workers and supervisors, with a focus on H-2A farmworkers in Eastern Washington. Through bilingual surveys, we will document barriers and facilitators to protections such as shade, rest, and water access, and co-develop practical solutions. Findings will be shared through a policy brief and outreach materials to inform state policy and improve heat safety for agricultural workers.