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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.
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”.
CODIL meeting announcement June 1978
After successfully halting the deportation of over 100 shoeworkers at the Sbicca shoe factory in El Monte, activists called for meeting to recruit more factory committees. Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries

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.

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  • 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.

  • That stopped everything

    Rosa Beltran reflects on the power of rank-and-file union members La huelga del 2000 fue una victoria— Yo estaba fuera de mi edificio piqueteando 24 horas seguidas, 24 horas deteniendo, durmiendo, pegado a los containers de basura porque como Uniones, si la Unión de los basureros miraba un janitor que estaba piqueteando, se respetaba eso.…

  • Una Causa Justa | A Just Cause

    This editorial from La Opinion reflects the widespread support for the Justice for Janitors campaign in the Spanish-speaking community of Los Angeles. The writer argues that the janitors’ demands are modest, and that their aggressive campaign reflects a broad dissatisfaction with the power structure in LA. Translated from Spanish by Stephanie Dyer. A Just Cause,…

  • We call each other sister unions

    Rocio Sáenz recalls the spirit of solidarity among unions in the early 1990s I come from Mexico City, and I had a union there. Even though, looking back at the unions in Mexico, they were often very corrupt, at the time I thought it was better than nothing. When I came to the U.S., I…

  • Let Justice Roll Down

    The Working Poor: Challenge to the Religious Community What is the responsibility of people of faith when confronted with the poverty of working people in a wealthy country? That question is posed by Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) in this 2000 video featuring the testimony of working people, faith leaders, academics, and…

  • They were willing to break with tradition

    Maria Elena Durazo recalls her first organizing job On a trip to Mexico I met Cristina Vázquez and others from the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU or ILG, now Workers United-SEIU). And when we came back, Cristina referred me to the union for a job. I was already familiar with the work of the…

  • We were the union they’d call

    Cristina Vázquez on the lessons of organizing immigrant workers in the 1970s In 1976, when I started working for the ILGWU, we had several thousand members, but for ten years they had hardly organized a shop. The union had not paid much attention to the situation in L.A. … but then the ILGWU decided to…

  • Fast for USC Workers

    In 1999, UNITE HERE leader Maria Elena Durazo led workers, clergy, and activists in a fast to protest the failure of the University of Southern California (USC) to negotiate with their workers. In an editorial printed in the Los Angeles Times, Durazo compared the fast to those of United Farm Worker leader Cesar Chavez. “How…

  • A Living Wage

    The Los Angeles Living Wage Coalition explains the fight to extend the city’s living wage ordinance to workers at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). This 1998 production features interviews with Madeline Janis-Aparicio (LAANE) and Jackie Goldberg (L.A. City Counsel) as well as scenes of Mike Garcia leading a protest by SEIU Local 1877 at LAX.…

  • Miguel Contreras: Warrior for Working Families

    As leader of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, Miguel Contreras (1952-2005) reshaped LA’s unions into a powerful political, economic, and social force. The child of farm workers, Contreras was an organizer for the United Farm Workers union (UFW), and later the Hotel and Restaurant Employees union (HERE). He led the Los Angeles County…