Here are some noteworthy labor headlines we read this week:

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FYI: Weekly Labor Reads is going on Summer vacation! See you in June to recap the news we missed.

Weekly Labor Reads:

TOP STORY

2,100 UC tech workers launch the largest tech organizing drive in U.S. history

On Tuesday, 2,100 UC tech workers celebrated a momentous victory as they reached majority support to join the union University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE). Their efforts broke records as the largest tech organizing drive in U.S. history, a major milestone for tech workers, California’s public university system and the labor movement. The UC programmers, analysts and designers organized with UPTE build and maintain UC medical center digital infrastructure, power data systems researchers across the state rely on and design learning tools that serve hundreds of thousands of students. UPTE’s new tech union sets a powerful example for roughly 480,000 computer and mathematical employees working for public institutions across the country, including 200,000 IT workers at public universities. 

UTPE

IMMIGRATION POLICY

Trump’s Deportations Are Costing Americans Jobs, Study Finds

The New York Times

Ronda Kaysen

L.A. LABOR NEWS

In deal with business leaders, $30 minimum wage for L.A. hotel and airport workers will be delayed

Los Angeles Times

Melissa Gomez

NEW RESEARCH

US employers spend more than $1.5bn a year to fight labor unions, report finds

The Guardian

Michael Sainato

WORKER HEALTH AND SAFETY

Thousands of U.S. countertop workers could have damaged lungs, safety expert says

NPR

Nell Greenfieldboyce

SUMMER VACATION

AUDIO STORIES

Vacation and why Americans take so little

NPR Planet Money

Sarah Gonzalez

AUDIO STORIES

As Cape Cod businesses gear up for summer, visa delays are holding up seasonal workers

WBUR

Zeninjor Enwemeka

IRLE NEWS

WEBINAR

Pathways to Opportunity: Higher Education, Work, and Wage Equity for Latinos in California

UCLA Labor Center and UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute

Ft. Lucero Herrera, UCLA Labor Center senior research analyst 

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. 

Hold the Line Caravan, 1997

In this photograph, Bob Erlenbusch, Director of the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness, speaks at a rally in defense of welfare rights organized by the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness in 1997. The "Hold the Line Caravan" called on local officials to protect access to public assistance for those in need after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors proposed to restrict eligibility to and cut benefits for the General Relief program (also known as welfare).

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.