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Ratification Vote Chart
Read more: Ratification Vote ChartOne 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 and distributed infographics to help make those processes more legible and educate their co-workers about the multi-step processes it took…
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Daily Picket Debrief
Read more: Daily Picket DebriefThis 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 that it captured the challenges of trust-building and communication during the strike. As he wrote: “I chose this photo not because I am the one with the megaphone, but instead because it gestures toward one of the great difficulties of…
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March to the State Capitol
Read more: March to the State CapitolThe University of California is one of the largest public universities in the United States and the third largest employer in the state of California. As a result, when UC workers go on strike, the state government can become a crucial point of leverage. Many state legislators, particularly those who serve districts where the UC’s campuses are located, believe strongly in the university’s public mission. During the UAW Fair UC Now Campaign, academic workers sought…
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Waiting for COLA Strike Meme
Read more: Waiting for COLA Strike MemeCommunication 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 channels to get the word out to their co-workers, including private servers like Signal, WhatsApp, and Discord, as well as…
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Strike Kitchen Menu
Read more: Strike Kitchen MenuHow 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 or crowdsourced funds towards the purchase and cooking of meals. This menu comes from the “Kitchen Committee” at UCLA, which…
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Kayak Picket Line
Read more: Kayak Picket LineThe 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 is effectively closed? Working together, UAW members identified new targets and new picketing locations across the state, including the workplaces…
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Raise L.A. Coalition Victory
Read more: Raise L.A. Coalition VictoryA 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 non-union hotels in Los Angeles would raise their minimum wage to $15.37 by 2015. The campaign was part of a multi-year strategy led by LAANE (Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy) and UNITE HERE Local 11 to establish a living wage across…
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Peter Olney remembers life as an organizer
Read more: Peter Olney remembers life as an organizer“So I started working for the union in, like, April of 1991, and I’ll never forget meeting with Jono [Shaffer] a couple weeks before I started. He said, “You know Peter, here at the Janitors, we expect you to mobilize probably five hundred workers every week to march.” I was like, “Say what?” You know, I worked for the furniture workers a whole year. We never mobilized more than a hundred of our members for…
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Celebrating the Donation of the Justice for Janitors Archive from USWW to UCLA
Read more: Celebrating the Donation of the Justice for Janitors Archive from USWW to UCLAThe IRLE’s collaboration with SEIU United Service Workers West (USWW) began in 2010, which marked the 20 year anniversary of their campaign in Century City. After nearly two years of planning meetings, archival collecting, oral history interviews, focus groups, and events, the archive assembled was officially donated to the UCLA Library in April 2012, enabling future generations of students, scholars, and community members to access the union’s rich history for years to come. To commemorate…
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Justice for Janitors History Day
Read more: Justice for Janitors History DayIn conjunction with the 20 year anniversary of their Campaign in Century City, Justice for Janitors (now part of SEIU United Service Workers West, SEIU-USWW) formed a partnership with the IRLE to uncover, preserve, analyze, and communicate the history of their union. Our collecting efforts began in the basement of the union hall, where decades worth of membership records, research materials, and photographs and ephemera were stored, but we knew that archive was incomplete. Eager…
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