Tufts Labor Lab works to improve countries’ working conditions, serves as place for female empowerment

Disclaimer: Ana Antolin was previously a columnist at the Daily. She was not involved in the writing of this article.

While the Tufts Labor Lab conducts research on working conditions in developing countries around the world, the lab's physical space is confined to one office in Braker Hall. The lab's founder and one of the current principal investigators Professor Drusilla Brown states that the lab does not have a standard lab environment like other departments at Tufts do. What also sets it apart from other lab environments is its research team of faculty and students — most of whom are women of color.

As the director of the International Relations (IR) Program, as well as an associate professor of economics, Brown had spoken to the IR core faculty when first conducting her research. Eventually, the team’s numbers grew into what is now the Labor Lab’s staff. According to Brown, 70 percent of the people the lab looks at are women, the vast majority being women of color.

“We are looking for people who are genuinely interested in the kind of work that the lab does and you will notice that it’s often women of color," she said. "It’s more likely that students of color and particularly women of color are [going to be] interested in the questions we’re looking at.”

According to its website, the lab utilizes a combination of social psychology, management science and economics to promote progress in the working conditions and worker well-being in factories, particularly those located in developing countries.

“We mostly use randomized control trials in experimenting with different kinds of innovations and interventions to see if we can improve conditions of work,” Brown said.

Dirayati Djaya (LA '16), the lab's program manager, added that the research has both humane interests and economic interests in mind.

“We’re trying to make the case that not only is human rights in the workplace important in a human rights perspective, but also that there is an economic case behind it," Djaya said. "So, I think our most important work is when we convey, using our data, to our clients that there is a business case involved and that it is more profitable to treat your workers right.”

According to Brown, a trade economist by profession, the lab first started by conducting compliance experiments in which firms were inspected by auditors. Such projects are still running throughout hundreds of factories in eight different countries. Brown stated that they look at whether factories become more compliant over time as well as how workers process the improvements of working conditions.

The lab also focuses on other common labor management malpractices including verbal abuse, sexual harassment, human trafficking, forced labor, excess hours, pay deception, and occupational safety and health, according to its website. Such research has been conducted or is currently being conducted in countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, India,Indonesia, Jordan, Lesotho, Nepal, Nicaragua, Myanmar, the United Kingdom and Vietnam.

According to Brown, the Labor Lab’sstaff is largely composed of undergraduate students from Tufts who learn a variety of skills such as organizing data files to elementary levels of data analysis and depiction of findings. Data is collected in approximately 17 different languages, requiring students to learn how to process and use computer software programs to process audio files. Brown believes that granting such responsibility to undergraduate students is what makes the Labor Lab so distinctive.

“I don’t know of another lab that uses undergraduates at as many levels of the analysis as this group does,” she said. “One hundred to 150 years ago, we were living during the time of the gentleman scientist. In the 1960s, it felt like science was on a track where it was just going to become more and more specialized, complex and inaccessible ... But now it’s the gentlewoman scientist in this lab. Students realize that they have the creativity and the skills and the tools to make real, meaningful, pathbreaking contributions to this kind of work.”

Ana Antolin, a senior and senior researcher at the Labor Lab, also spoke to the gender divide in research and how the Labor Lab defies the norm.

“[The lab’s environment] is really great because it’s women in a quantitative setting," she said. "We often talk about how women are huge in liberal arts degrees but not very much in STEM in a lot of ways. So, to have a ton of women who are in this really cool field but also working with quantitative skills is really a unique place.”

Djaya also commented on the empowerment she feels from working in the lab.

“A huge thing is the fact that I have female bosses," she said. "We’re seeing sexual harassment in factories, but sexual harassment is prevalent everywhere. The glass ceiling is so real but I don’t have the same kind of issues. [Working in the lab] has really given me great role models and [taught me] what it’s like to be a female in the workplace.”

When asked about any challenges that the lab faces, Brown cited having a space on campus to handle confidential data as the lab's biggest issue. She explained that while the lab collects data over a secure field, all information is de-identified. Currently, the lab possesses around 25,000 records containing workers’ surveys, according to Brown.

"We need to protect the confidentiality and the security of the data, but there’s no place to do that at Tufts,” Brown said.

Despite such a challenge, Djaya and Antolin, who have been working in the lab since 2014 and 2015 respectively, described their jobs as rewarding, academically fitting and a constant source of intellectual stimuli.

“We’re all very close with each other," Antolin said. "It’s a very supportive environment in [many] different ways.”

Djaya added that the people involved at the Labor Lab and the impact of the lab inspire her.

“The number one thing that makes working in this lab really great is that everyone is really passionate about the work that we’re doing because, at the end of the day, this [work] is going to create some sort of impact and we’re always reminded why we’re doing this,” she said.