Los Angeles Workers Justice Archive
Beginning over a decade ago, the IRLE’s Memory Work Research Initiative has worked to collect, organize, and make available the history of working people in Southern California.
We have collaborated with UCLA Library Special Collections to preserve the records of SEIU-USWW (Justice for Janitors), UNITE-HERE Local 11, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), and Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE). Recognizing that the human record of workplace and community organizing in late 20th century Los Angeles is in a precarious state, we have also worked to build our own L.A. Workers Justice Archive at the IRLE.
Our Collections
Video Collection
A collection of historic television coverage and documentary video dating from the late 1980s to the 2010s.
Photo Collection
Photographs documenting the workers justice movement in Southern California, including the history of the IRLE.
Calisphere Digital Library
Documents and artifacts from the Los Angeles labor movement, including the UNITE HERE Local 11 Oral History Project.
Dig Deeper into the Archives
The base of our collecting efforts is our own faculty and staff, who have preserved materials from their decades of experience in the movement for workers justice. We also seek out materials documenting overlooked episodes, organizations, and personalities in the struggle for labor and immigrant rights in Southern California. As with our previous Memory Work, we collaborate with memory keepers on campus and beyond to organize and selectively digitize these records to share them with the broadest possible audience. You can now search our collections and finding aids and access portions of materials online at the IRLE’s Archives Space portal.
