These are some noteworthy labor headlines we read this week.

Weekend Labor Reads:

UC employees, not waiting on leaders, sue Trump for ‘financial coercion’ over UCLA cuts

This week, twenty-one unions and faculty associations representing more than 100,000 UC workers sued President Trump over his demands for UCLA to enact sweeping changes and forfeit $1.2 billion in order to restore suspended federal research grants. The lawsuit claims that the federal government’s demands are unconstitutional and illegally force “ideological dominance” over a UC education. This UC worker-led lawsuit comes as the UC community anxiously awaits further action from UC leadership. 

Los Angeles Times

Jaweed Kaleem

LABOR AND FREE SPEECH

After Charlie Kirk’s slaying, workers learn the limits of free speech in and out of their jobs

Los Angeles Times

Cathy Bussewitz and Wyatte Grantham-Philips

HIGHER EDUCATION WORKERS

Loyola Marymount just declared its faculty union doesn’t exist anymore

Los Angeles Public Press

Larry Buhl

FEDERAL UPDATES

‘Like working in a prison’: cuts, fear and understaffing at Trump’s labor department

The Guardian 

Michael Sainato

TECHNOLOGY WORKERS

Hundreds of Google AI Workers Were Fired Amid Fight Over Working Conditions

Wired

Varsha Bansal

Research from the IRLE:

Building a Conservative Labor Movement: American Compass and the Right’s Pro-Worker Policy Agenda

CUNY New Labor Forum

Kristoffer Smemo, UCLA Labor Studies faculty

IRLE IN THE NEWS:

LABOR AND TECHNOLOGY

A play about the revolt of human workers — not machines — gave us the word 'robot'

All Things Considered | NPR

Emma Bowman

Ft. Toby Higbie, IRLE Director

MEXICAN HERITAGE

‘No vamos a tener miedo’: más de 150 contingentes participarán en desfile mexicano de Los Ángeles

Los Angeles Times

Soudi Jiménez

Ft. Gaspar Rivera Salgado, UCLA Labor Studies faculty

Memory Work Los Angeles:

Memory Work Los Angeles is a project of UCLA IRLE. We bring the past to the present to highlight the diverse experiences and perspectives of working people in Southern California, the changing world of work, and the continuing struggle for equality.

Taking on the New Otani (1996)

This documentary produced by HERE Local 11 covers the monumental boycott campaign at the New Otani Hotel in Los Angeles in 1996. Scenes include workers at the hotel speaking to a convention of other Local 11 members, unionists and community supporters speak out against Kajima Corporation the major stakeholders in the New Otani, street protests and civil disobedience. Discover more Los Angeles labor history on the Memory Work website. 

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UCLA's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) advances labor research and education for workplace justice. Through the work of its units – the UCLA Labor Center, the Human Resources Roundtable, the Labor Occupational Safety and Health program (LOSH) and its academic program, UCLA Labor Studies – the Institute forms wide-ranging research and agendas that carry UCLA into the Los Angeles community and beyond.