Here are some noteworthy labor headlines we read this week:

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Weekly Labor Reads:

TOP STORY

‘We won!’ UC service workers get tentative deal for big raises, averting threatened strike

After more than two years of bargaining with the UC, AFSCME Local 3299 announced Wednesday night that they had won a historic tentative agreement that could raise wages significantly, cap healthcare costs and improve job security for the 40,000 patient care and building service workers represented by the local. The agreement came on the eve of what would have been a highly disruptive strike, impacting hospitals and dining halls across all UC campuses. Workers displayed immense power and solidarity by authorizing an open-ended strike to demand that UC bargain in good faith and address the rising cost of living and the housing affordability crisis. On the significant wage boosts, raising minimums to $30.10 by April 2029, AFSCME Local 3299 President Michael Avant said, “It means UC’s most vulnerable workers will no longer have to choose between paying for healthcare and paying for groceries.”

Los Angeles Times

Jaweed Kaleem

LIVING WAGE

L.A. could push back $30 wage plan for hotel, airport workers

KTLA

Lily Dallow

AI X WORKERS

Forget the AI job apocalypse. AI’s real threat is worker control and surveillance

The Guardian

Nazrul Islam

AUDIO STORIES

The human labor that makes AI work

It's Been a Minute | NPR

Brittany Luse, Liam McBain and 
Neena Pathak

WORKER HEALTH AND SAFETY

Trump’s Latest Target: Coal Miners’ Safety

In These Times

Kim Kelly

IRLE IN THE NEWS

UCLA LABOR CENTER

Ana Luz González-Vásquez appointed Deputy Director of the UCLA Labor Center

UCLA Labor Center

LABOR HISTORY, ARTS & CULTURE

AUDIO STORIES

Diary of a WNBA negotiator

Planet Money | NPR

Emma Peaslee, Erika Beras

and Marianne McCune

PHOTOGRAPHY & FINE ARTS

One photographer’s immigrants, laborers and child workers at the Frick Pittsburgh

90.5 WESA

Bill O'Driscoll

POWER FROM THE PAST!

The Memory Work Research Initiative (MWRI) engages community partners, activists, scholars and students in a thoughtful process of collecting, preserving and sharing the rich history of organizing in Southern California. The MWRI strives to establish collaborative modes of remembrance grounded in the IRLE’s commitment to advancing quality education and employment for all. 

APALA Founding Convention, 1992

This short documentary covers the founding convention of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), held in Washington D.C. in May, 1992. APALA is the “first and only national organization of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) workers.” The organization’s founding president, Kent Wong, proposed the idea of establishing a national organization of AAPI trade unionists to AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland while working as a staff attorney for the SEIU in Los Angeles. With the support of Kirkland, Wong travelled across the country to convene meetings with veteran AAPI labor activists, existing AAPI labor committees and other leaders from key unions with sizable Asian American memberships and plan for a national convention. Some 500 labor leaders attended the first convention of APALA, passing resolutions in support of immigrant rights, ending employer sanctions and creating an Organizing Institute to recruit and train the next generation of AAPI organizers. Wong’s vision and commitment to develop young worker activists endures today in the UCLA Department of Labor Studies, as well as the UCLA Labor Center’s and UCLA LOSH’s many educational initiatives. 

Learn more about APALA and view more 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.