These are some noteworthy labor headlines we read this week.

Weekly Labor Reads:

TOP STORY

The State Is Escalating Charges Against Protesters. Labor Must Defend Them.

This article explores the rising pattern of harsh legal prosecution aimed at anti-ICE protesters and highlights unions’ role in advocating for fair legal processes for their members. Jonathan Caravello, a lecturer at a California State University, is facing federal felony charges and up to 20 years in prison for his role in a protest outside an immigration raid. Initially charged with a misdemeanor and released, a federal grand jury later escalated the stakes by indicting Caravello on a felony charge. The article argues this is only one example of federal courts pursuing severe indictments for activists arrested at protests. After his arrest, Caravello’s union, the California Faculty Association (CFA), stepped in to demand his release. The union also plans to picket outside his hearing in March. Missé writes, “A visible, united-front defense campaign rooted in labor, immigrant organizations, and civil liberties advocates would make clear that criminalizing solidarity will not go unchallenged.”

Truthout 

Blanca Missé

DATA ANALYSIS

Immigrants Make the Labor Market Great

Center for American Progress 

Sara Estep and Kennedy Andara

UNION STRATEGIES

Four Union Strategies to Fight on A.I.

Labor Notes

Keith Brower Brown

NEW RESEARCH

New Paper Explores Black Workers in the South and Their Views on Unions

Cornell ILR

Julie Greco

PROFILES

Julie Su Isn’t Done Fighting for Workers’ Rights



In These Times

Hamilton Nolan

IRLE NEWS

IRLE RESEARCH

Hollywood Diversity Report 2026 Part 1: Theatrical

Entertainment and Media Research Initiative

HOLLYWOOD DIVERSITY

With declining diversity, the U.S. theatrical film industry faces an uncertain future

UCLA Newsroom 

Barbra Ramos

IRLE HIGHLIGHT

UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report reshapes the industry conversation on representation

UCLA IRLE

Willa Needham 

Remember This!

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.

UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Archive

It felt like “Hot Labor Summer” returned to UCLA campus this Thursday, months early and hotter than ever, as over 1,000 UC staff and researchers engaged in a powerful last chance picket. The picket was a final warning for UC to come to the bargaining table before the UAW units–RPSPs and SSAPs, representing over 20,000 workers across the UC–commence an unfair labor practice strike. Graduate students organized with the UAW joined the picket in solidarity, as did representatives from the brand new COMMAS-UAW unit, comprising UC communications, marketing and sales workers, which just voted to authorize their union on Wednesday. The labor activity on campus was reminiscent of 2022’s UAW “Fair UC Now” movement, in which three UAW units representing some 48,000 workers aligned their contract campaigns and coordinated a ULP strike after months of unsuccessful bargaining. This photo from the IRLE’s UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Archive shows a picket outside Powell Library. Learn more about the 2022 campaign and the archival collection here. 

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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.