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Power from the past

Category: Documents

Organizing leaflets, press releases, and other print documents from the UCLA Library

  • Day of Conscience Against Sweatshops

    Day of Conscience Against Sweatshops

    A garment worker carries a “Bill For Your Dirty Laundry” at a “Day of Conscience to End Sweatshops” rally and march in Los Angeles’ garment district on October 4, 1997. Organized by UNITE and its allies as part of their campaign against Guess? Jeans, the event was part of a national day of action that aimed to pressure the Presidential Task Force on Apparel Manufacturing to enforce a strong accord that would protect garment workers’ rights in Los Angeles and around the world. 

    Photograph by Linda A. Lotz, CLUE records (LSC.2441), UCLA Library Special Collections Collection Information: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8g167r7/

    View more of Lotz’ photos from the CLUE collection here.

  • May Day Los Angeles, 2003

    May Day Los Angeles, 2003

    The Multi-Ethnic Immigrant Workers Organizing Network (MIWON) formed in the year 2000 to support immigrant and undocumented immigrant labor rights across Los Angeles. The coalition brought together the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (Institute for Popular Education of Southern California, IDEPSCA), Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA), the Pilipino Worker Center (PWC), and later the Garment Worker Center (GWC), among other organizations. Throughout its ten years, these groups committed themselves “to the struggle for dignity, justice, and the human rights of immigrant workers and all peoples,” through sharing strategies and information, fostering interethnic and interracial solidarity, and promoting political consciousness and civic engagement among low-wage workers in Los Angeles.

    MIWON campaigned for the passage of the “Immigrant Workers Bill of Human Rights” at the Los Angeles City Council in 2001, and to expand undocumented immigrants’ access to drivers’ licenses and government-issued identification. But perhaps their most enduring tactic was their annual commemoration of May Day (International Workers Day), marches that promoted solidarity among multiethnic and immigrant workers in Los Angeles and beyond. 

    Pictured here: a scene from MIWON’s May Day march in 2003, where protestors connected “immigrant bashing” in Los Angeles and the United States government’s invasion of Iraq weeks earlier. 

    View more images from the 2003 May Day march here.

  • Ratification Vote Chart

    Ratification Vote Chart

    One of the main challenges in organizing graduate student workers is the large percentage of turnover between graduating and incoming students each year. Collective bargaining and contract ratification involve complicated internal and statutory processes that can seem overwhelming and confusing to new union members. During the UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Campaign, rank-and-file members developed and distributed infographics to help make those processes more legible and educate their co-workers about the multi-step processes it took to settle their contract fight. This example comes from UC Berkeley, where more members who had been through the contract ratification process before developed detailed visuals to share their knowledge and experience with their colleagues.

    Infographics explaining the strike process, campus maps of picket lines, and more, are part of the UAW Fair UC Now Campaign 2022 Collection, part of the Wayne State Reuther Library.

  • Waiting for COLA Strike Meme

    UAW members and supporters shared thousands of online images, charts, and ideas including this meme expressing disappointment that the contract failed to include a cost of living adjustment (COLA).

    Communication is crucial during any strike campaign, as announcements, information, and instructions must be shared as quickly as possible. But how do you communicate with 48,000 workers during a strike across multiple campuses who access information in a variety of ways? During the UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Campaign, workers used all kinds of information channels to get the word out to their co-workers, including private servers like Signal, WhatsApp, and Discord, as well as public-facing social media on Instagram and Twitter (now, X). Memes became a primary medium for summarizing key bargaining points, major events, and airing criticisms across all platforms. Although ephemeral by nature, these visual relics often carried deeper meaning for their creators.  As the contributor of this meme from UC Merced described, for union members, memes became “an outlet for their frustration,” many opting for sarcasm and humor as they became disillusioned with the bargaining process. 

    A large collection of memes like these are part of the UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Campaign Collection, part of the Wayne State Reuther Library.

  • Strike Kitchen Menu

    Strike Kitchen Menu

    How do you keep a picket line running all day? During the UAW strike at the University of California in 2022, academic workers developed their own creative forms of mutual aid to keep their colleagues fed every day. Committees formed across all UC campuses to distribute food, using donations from supportive allies and local restaurants or crowdsourced funds towards the purchase and cooking of meals. This menu comes from the “Kitchen Committee” at UCLA, which served meals to the picket line stationed outside of Bunche Hall. As members of the Kitchen Committee described, not only did they provide daily lunches for graduate student workers throughout the strike campaign, in the process, they constructed new systems of collective care and support rooted in solidarity.

    This menu– as well as many others from the Bunche Hall picket line– are part of the UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Campaign Collection, part of the Wayne State Reuther Library.

  • “Immigrant workers have always agreed with us philosophically”

    “Immigrant workers have always agreed with us philosophically”

    In this excerpt of a 1995 speech on multi-union organizing strategy, David Sickler recounts the changing relationship between immigrant workers and organized labor in southern California and identifies some of the mistakes unions have made in their approach to immigrant workers. As the Regional Director for the AFL-CIO and head of the Los Angeles-Orange County Organizing Committee (LAOCOC), Sickler launched the California Immigrant Workers Association (CIWA) to organize undocumented workers into unions. This speech was delivered at the UCLA Labor Center.

    Now I’m somebody who’s tried to organize immigrant workers in this town for 20 years. We’ve had some success here and there, but the movement’s never been able to prove to immigrant workers that it could deliver. That it could put its money where its mouth was.

    Immigrant workers have always agreed with us philosophically. They know we’re advocates; they know we’re on their side. But they’ve been reluctant to get on board with us on a large scale because they’ve watched our failures. They know that some of our own unions in the past, when they’d go out and organize companies that had immigrant workers, if those workers went on strike and the employer replaced them with other immigrant workers, the union would call the INS and have the scab workers deported. The employer would then call the INS and have the strikers deported. That’s a great deal for immigrant workers. Welcome! Welcome to the institutions of the United States. But the labor movement changed its act in the 70s and the 80s, and we aren’t doing those kinds of things any more. Still, these workers just weren’t sure we could deliver. What happened with the signing of the Justice for Janitors con­tract sent shockwaves through the immigrant community in Southern California. It will never be the same, ever. Because about six months after the signing of that contract, 900 workers at American Racing Equipment in Rancho Domingas-and I’m telling you it’s 100 percent immigrant-staged a five-day walkout.

    (more…)
  • On a mission to organize immigrant workers

    On a mission to organize immigrant workers

    Launched in 1989, the California Immigrant Workers Association (CIWA) supported a number of break-through union campaigns with immigrant workers. David Sickler, regional director for the AFL-CIO, conceived of CIWA as a way to funnel support for the many organizing drives that developed in the wake of the Immigration Reform and Control Act. CIWA staff provided legal and organizing aid to immigrant workers and connected them with unions, and advised unions on organizing best practices. However, in the spring of 1994 national leaders of the AFL-CIO decided to stop funding the program. In a memo to local union leaders, Sickler and CIWA staffer Jose De Paz appeal to southern California union leaders to help fund CIWA. The demise of CIWA came just months before immigrant rights groups and unions scrambled to fight the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in the November 1994 election.

    From the UNITE HERE Local 11 Records, Box 17 Folder 6, UCLA Library Department of Special Collections.

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    Baker, Bob. “Unions Try Bilingual Recruiting: A Handful of Aggressive Local Organizers Are Making Unprecedented Efforts to Replenish Their Ranks with Immigrant Workers, Especially Latinos. So Far, the Strategy Is Paying Off.” Los Angeles Times (1923-1995); Los Angeles, Calif., March 25, 1991. https://search.proquest.com/hnplatimes/docview/1638431258/abstract/23F841F81AA34934PQ/360.

  • “They embraced their cause 24 hours a day”

    In the summer of 1992, immigrant construction workers across southern California launched a militant strike that surprised both their employers and the Anglo leaders of trade unions. Aided by the California Immigrant Workers Association (CIWA), the drywallers' strike succeeded in improving working conditions in residential construction across the region. This account is from CIWA organizer Jose De Paz. CIWA operated from 1989-1994 as an associate membership organization of the AFL-CIO.

    Three main ingredients account for the success of the drywallers strike. First, the determination of the strikers. They were not doing “strike duty”. They embraced their cause 24 hours a day and everything else became secondary to the strike. Additionally, the strikers were aware that they were being oppressed not only as workers but also as Mexicans, which made their bond twice as strong. This came particularly handy when entire families were evicted from their homes for non-payment of rent and had to move in with one or more families in a single dwelling.

    Second, organized labor’s considerable contribution to the independent drywall strike fund. In addition to individuals and community organizations, more than 21 AFL-CIO affiliated unions and six Central Labor Councils in California made significant donations to the fund.

    Third, CIWA’s unique participation. Besides coordinating legal and immigration defense, CIWA served as a communication bridge between the strikers and police agencies. CIWA also functioned as the strikers’ spokesperson with the media (particularly the Spanish-language media) and as the coordinator of support from Latino community and labor organizations. CIWA’s unique com­ bination of skills and its dual credentials in the labor and Latino communities enabled it to convert the drywallers’ struggle from a localized labor dispute into a Latino workers movement.

    (more…)
  • Building sustainable peace in Guatemala, the union perspective

    Building sustainable peace in Guatemala, the union perspective

    From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Central American nations of El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala experienced civil war, government-sponsored death squads, and genocide. Many who fled the violence settled in Los Angeles were they joined other immigrant workers in low-wage service sector jobs, and became part of the unionization drives of the 1990s. Immigrants workers then mobilized their unions in support of the peace process by welcoming visiting delegations and lobbying federal officials. This flyer documents the visit of Guatemalan union leader Rodolfo Robles to SEIU Local 399 in the early 1990s. His union, representing Coca Cola workers, played a leading role in the opposition to military dictatorship by urban workers. Learn more about Justice for Janitors.

  • Stop the Cooperation between the Police and the INS

    Stop the Cooperation between the Police and the INS

    A flyer announcing a protest rally and march organized by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) in the fall of 1990. Formed in the wake of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, CHIRLA drew together organizations and activists from many communities to demand inclusion for immigrants. Reflecting growing progressive coalition in Los Angeles, co-sponsors of this rally included labor unions, religious, civil liberties, and immigrant rights organizations Los Angeles. From the Tom Bradley Papers, Box 1170, folder 9, UCLA Special Collections. Download the Document.

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    “Mayor Tom Bradley Administration Papers, 1920-1993 (Bulk 1973-1993).” UCLA Library Special Collections. Accessed January 23, 2019. http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt4489n8jd/.