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Weekly Labor Reads:

TOP STORY

Thousands of California public employees begin strike over contract

On Wednesday, thousands of state workers went on strike across California to protest lapsed contract negotiations with the Newsom administration. The one-day strike was led by SEIU 1000, which represents more than 100,000 state employees in California. Contract negotiations have been at an impasse since June 30, when union negotiators say state officials rejected their key proposals, including wage increases and hybrid work schedules. In Los Angeles, protesters gathered outside the Ronald Reagan state building downtown. 

The Guardian

Uwa Ede-Osifo

LABOR POLITICS

As More Unions Oppose ICE and Israel, the Right Is Cracking Down

Truthout

Blanca Missé

PERSPECTIVES

Unions Are the Key to America’s Cost of Living Crisis

Time

Liz Shuler and Heidi Shierholz

LABOR & RACE

Black Unemployment Hints at a Job Market in Worse Shape Than It Seems

New York Times

Talmon Joseph Smith

CARE WORKERS

The Workers Who Care for Us Can’t Afford to Get By

Capital & Main

Mark Kreidler

POWER FROM THE PAST!

Beginning in fall 2026, the Power from the Past weekly series highlights selections from IRLE's 80th anniversary timeline. Supported by the Memory Work Research Initiative (MWRI), the timeline commemorates historic milestones at the Institute, UCLA and the Los Angeles community.

1960 – “Merit Employment” Illustration

This illustration from the IRLE report “Merit Employment,” published in1960, highlights persistent employment segregation in an increasingly diverse and integrated society. More than 65 years later, access to good jobs remains unequal across race, citizenship, gender and other social identities. This week, the New York Times reported that the unemployment rate for Black Americans is nearly double that of white Americans. Read more in the featured article above. 

For more moments of IRLE, UCLA and Los Angeles history, visit irle.ucla.edu/80th/timeline/.

UPCOMING IRLE EVENTS

TODAY! Labor Strategies to Defend Immigrant Worker Rights Today

Date and Time: Friday, October 16, 2026, 10-11:30 am PDT

Location: Virtual

Part two of the IRLE’s “Meeting the Moment, Building the Movement” series brings together three leaders at the forefront of labor and community responses to the current militarized federal immigration campaign in cities across the U.S. Facing the largest deportation campaign since the 1950s, labor unions and their members, alongside allies in the immigrant rights movement, are taking creative, nonviolent action to defend immigrant communities. 

David Huerta, President of SEIU California and SEIU-United Service Workers West (USWW), Bernie Burnham, President of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, and Kurt Petersen, Co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, will join the IRLE to share their insights as leaders of the movement.

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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.