Explore the Collection

Fair UC Now! Strike ArchiveStriking academic workers march on the California capitol building in Sacramento during the 2022-23 strike. Contributed by UC Davis.
Religious, political, and labor movement leaders join the janitors during their 2000 strike.
Immigrant rights advocates protested the close relationship between the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 1990.
Rev. James Lawson and an actor portraying a ghostly character from Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”.
Regla Soto and fellow housekeepers march with quilt documenting their workplace injuries.
Activists with the 1986 Los Angeles Jobs with Peace campaign hold signs for Proposition V outside the International Ladies Garment Workers union hall on MacArthur Park.

Memory Work Los Angeles is a collaboration between labor unions, community organizations, activists, librarians, and researchers to reclaim the past, understand the present, and change the future of work and working people. We document changing ways of work, worker organizing, and struggles to win equal treatment and full citizenship for all in our multi-racial society.

We train UCLA students to be critical memory workers able to research and communicate evidence-based stories from the past that matter to our present. We celebrate and support the work of remembrance carried on by others, and aim to inspire many ways of seeing the past around us.  

Use this site to explore case studies of creative union and community campaigns, view photographs, documents, and videos documenting these movements, or link to research collections. The collection is always growing.

Memory Work is a project of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.

Remember This!
Explore
Research

  • May Day Los Angeles, 2003

    The Multi-Ethnic Immigrant Workers Organizing Network (MIWON) formed in the year 2000 to support immigrant and undocumented immigrant labor rights across Los Angeles. The coalition brought together the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (Institute for Popular Education of Southern California, IDEPSCA), Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA),…

  • Day of Conscience Against Sweatshops

    A garment worker carries a “Bill For Your Dirty Laundry” at a “Day of Conscience to End Sweatshops” rally and march in Los Angeles’ garment district on October 4, 1997. Organized by UNITE and its allies as part of their campaign against Guess? Jeans, the event was part of a national day of action that…

  • Boycott Forever 21

    In 2001, the coalition of organizations that had come together to support the Thai Workers in El Monte pooled their funds to establish the Garment Worker Center (GWC), as a legal clinic to support workers in filing wage claims under the new procedures established by AB633. They hired three young Asian American women to run…

  • Guess? Who Pockets the Difference (1996)

    In 1995, UNITE! (Union of Needle Trades and Industrial Textile Employees, formed after a merger of the ILGWU and ACTWU) launched a campaign against Guess? Jeans, the largest apparel manufacturer in Los Angeles. Known for its distinctive stone-washed jeans, Guess? operated its own retail stores and made down-market lines sold at department stores, averaging over…

  • Ratification Vote Chart

    One of the main challenges in organizing graduate student workers is the large percentage of turnover between graduating and incoming students each year. Collective bargaining and contract ratification involve complicated internal and statutory processes that can seem overwhelming and confusing to new union members. During the UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Campaign, rank-and-file members developed…

  • Daily Picket Debrief

    This photo was donated by Sammy Feldblum, a participant in the UC UAW Labor Summer Program who contributed to the UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Collection. As Feldblum described, the significance of the image was in capturing the challenges of trust-building and communication. As he wrote: “I chose this photo not because I am the…

  • Waiting for COLA Strike Meme

    Communication is crucial during any strike campaign, as announcements, information, and instructions must be shared as quickly as possible. But how do you communicate with 48,000 workers during a strike across multiple campuses who access information in a variety of ways? During the UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Campaign, workers used all kinds of information…

  • Strike Kitchen Menu

    How do you keep a picket line running all day? During the UAW strike at the University of California in 2022, academic workers developed their own creative forms of mutual aid to keep their colleagues fed every day. Committees formed across all UC campuses to distribute food, using donations from supportive allies and local restaurants…

  • Kayak Picket Line

    The UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Campaign began Nov. 14, when striking graduate workers formed picket lines on campuses across the state that continued for at least four weeks. But after classes concluded for the year in December, striking workers had to rethink their strategies. How can you escalate a work stoppage when that worksite…

  • Raise L.A. Coalition Victory, 2014

    A higher minimum wage for workers in big hotels Supporters of the Raise L.A. coalition celebrate a vote of the Los Angeles city council in September 2014. Under the new law, large nonunion hotels in Los Angeles would raise their minimum wage to $15.37 by 2015. The campaign was part of a multi-year strategy led…

  • Justice for Janitors History Day

    The members of SEIU-USWW gathered at the union hall in May 2011 to share their stories, memories, photographs, clippings, and artifacts. Long-time union member Victoria Marquez brought an extensive collection of documents, buttons, t-shirts, and other items. Later, she shared her life story with Andrew Gomez as part of a UCLA Oral History Research Center…

  • I am a Human Being | Soy un Ser Humano

    In September 2006, UNITE HERE Local 11 organized what was likely the largest act of civil disobedience in Los Angeles History. Union members, faith leaders, elected officials, and community allies joined in a large march to protest low wages at corporate hotels along Century Blvd outside of Los Angeles International Airport. The protest demonstrated the…

  • Los Angeles Immigrant Rights March, 2006

    On May 1, 2006 hundreds of thousands marched in Los Angeles and other large U.S. cities in support of immigrant rights. Called by many “A Day without an Immigrant,” the May Day protests were the culmination of months of planning in response to a punitive immigration bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R.…

  • Victory at Last: Hotel workers reflect on contract victory (2005)

    For 14 months during 2004-2005, UNITE HERE Local 11 mounted an assertive campaign to win a contract with employers represented by the Los Angeles Hotel Employers Council. Building on the union’s rank-and-file strategy, hotel workers organized repeated delegations to articulate their demands to hotel management. The union also mobilized community allies and the labor movement…

  • David Beats Goliath: How Inglewood defeated WalMart

    In 2004, voters in the city of Inglewood rejected a ballot initiative that would have allowed retail giant WalMart to bypass the opposition of the city council to their big-box store. This documentary, narrated by a local minister, describes the unprecedented labor-community coalition that defeated the world’s largest corporation.