Here are some noteworthy labor headlines we read this week:

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Weekly Labor Reads:

TOP STORY

LA Stadium Workers Won the Right to Strike Over ICE

This summer, ahead of the highly anticipated World Cup matches in Los Angeles, concessions workers at SoFi Stadium won the right to strike if ICE poses a threat to their safety. This is but one victory amid other worker wins across the US ahead of the tournament. Members of UNITE HERE Local 11 at the LA stadium also won significant wage increases using the World Cup as leverage. Bartenders and servers will see a 30 percent increase in automatic tips, and non-tipped workers will receive a $9 per hour raise. The union strategically set their next contract to expire at the end of April 2028, weeks before the Summer Olympics arrive in Los Angeles.

Jacobin

Paul Prescod and Natascha Elena Uhlmann

WORKERS AND TECHNOLOGY

How rebuilding union power would strengthen workers, the economy, and our democracy

Economic Policy Institute

Heidi Shierholz et. al

WORKERS AND TECHNOLOGY

The Work of Helping A.I. Destroy Work

The New York Times

Lora Kelley

YOUNG WORKERS

Mom, Dad, I Want to Be a Welder

The New York Times

Callie Holtermann

PERSPECTIVES

AI Lays Bare the Authoritarianism of Modern Work. Time to Rethink Education.

Tech Policy Press

Velislava Hillman and Peter G. Kirchschlaeger

IRLE IN THE NEWS

ICYMI

Labor Studies Celebrates Its First Graduating Class as a Department

UCLA Labor Studies

Marcos Ruiz Rojas

HOTEL WORKERS

Hotel Workers Hoped the World Cup Would Boost Their Hours. It Didn’t.

The New York Times

Kurtis Lee

Ft. Victor Narro, UCLA Labor Center project director

HIGHER EDUCATION

How the Trump administration’s revamp of funding guidelines could threaten research

Daily Bruin

Alyssa Wong

Ft. Toby Higbie, IRLE director

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. 

Union Summer, 1997

This promotional video takes viewers inside the AFL-CIO's Union Summer program in 1997. At the time, the UCLA Labor Center coordinated the program in Los Angeles. The Labor Center’s involvement has since morphed into the UCLA Labor Summer fellowship program. Through an eight-week placement at a Los Angeles labor union or worker center, UCLA Labor Summer fellows receive frontline training as organizers for economic justice campaigns, with an emphasis on exploring how race, class, gender and immigration intersect with the labor rights movement.

View 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.