Category: Photos

Photographs from the UCLA Library, community archives, and the project team.

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Daily Picket Debrief

UAW strike leader Sammy Feldblum addresses picketers in front of UCLA’s Bunche Hall. A blue and gold banner demanding “Livable WAGES” hangs from the window in the teaching assistants’ office.

This photo was donated by Sammy Feldblum, a participant in the UC UAW Labor Summer Program who contributed to the UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Collection. As Feldblum described, the significance of the image was in capturing the challenges of trust-building and communication. As he wrote:

“I chose this photo not because I am the one with the megaphone, but instead because it gestures toward one of the great difficulties of union democracy: the ability to convey evolving information between rank-and-file and leadership, to effectively channel the union’s collective will. Our strike spanned nine campuses, and included some 48,000 workers: collective action comprised both organizing our particular corners of campus and coordination across campuses and the state. This picture, by UCLA anthropologist Nicole Smith, shows an end-of-day consultation within our picket line, in which we considered strategy and mood. By strike’s end, a congress of leaders from each department gathered to facilitate information sharing from the picket line to the bargaining table and back; before that, though, difficulties in communication were felt at times as a lack of attentiveness to rank-and-file priorities.”

“Union democracy is a dynamic thing: the strength of this strike depended on the widespread mobilization of membership cultivated by actions in the preceding years, and the strike in turn proffered new experiences, activations, and insights to inform the struggles ahead. Perhaps my holding the microphone is then in fact illustrative: far from a seasoned unionist before the strike, I, like so many others, found myself newly thrust into vexed situations with material stakes and unclear outcomes, and nothing to do about it but think hard with my comrades about how to proceed as the tides roiled all around us.”

Photos from this picket line, as well as many others, are part of the UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Campaign Collection, part of the Wayne State Reuther Library.

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March to the State Capitol

Striking academic workers march on the California capitol building in Sacramento during the 2022-23 strike.

The University of California is one of the largest public universities in the United States and the third largest employer in the state. As a result, when UC workers go on strike, the state government can become a crucial point of leverage. Many state legislators, particularly those who serve districts where the UC’s campuses are located, believe strongly in the university’s public mission. During the UAW Fair UC Now Campaign, academic workers sought to challenge the notion that the UC was living up to that public mission in multiple ways as a means to win support from those legislators for their bargaining demands. They sent letters and petitions to legislative offices, lobbied for increased workplace protections, and as captured here, marched on the capitol itself. On Dec. 5, UAW members from UC Davis and other campuses descended on the state capitol building in Sacramento, continuing their march to the Offices of the UC President nearby. They called on state legislators to use their influence to ensure that the UC bargain in good faith and pay all of its employees a livable wage.

Photos from this action, as well as many others, are part of the UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Campaign Collection, part of the Wayne State Reuther Library.

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Kayak Picket Line

Striking academic workers from UC Irvine picket the seaside home of a major UC donor.

The UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Campaign began Nov. 14, when striking graduate workers formed picket lines on campuses across the state that continued for at least four weeks. But after classes concluded for the year in December, striking workers had to rethink their strategies. How can you escalate a work stoppage when that worksite is effectively closed? The members of UAW decided to focus their demonstrations on new targets. Working together, they identified new picketing locations across the state, including the workplaces and residences of the UC Regents and other key stakeholders. Many of these off-campus demonstrations also took novel forms, including the kayak action pictured here, when students from UC Irvine paddled their picket line towards an off-shore island where the residence of a major UC donor was located.

Photos from this picket line, as well as many others, are part of the UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Campaign Collection, part of the Wayne State Reuther Library.

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Justice for Janitors History Day

Rank and file activist Victoria Marquez shares her personal collection of newspapers, documents, t-shirts, hats, and buttons at a history gathering day.

The members of SEIU-USWW gathered at the union hall in May 2011 to share their stories, memories, photographs, clippings, and artifacts. Long-time union member Victoria Marquez brought an extensive collection of documents, buttons, t-shirts, and other items. Later, she shared her life story with Andrew Gomez as part of a UCLA Oral History Research Center project. You can listen and read along here.

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Fast for USC Workers

Dolores Huerta, Jesse Jackson support USC workers.

In 1999, UNITE HERE leader Maria Elena Durazo led workers, clergy, and activists in a fast to protest the failure of the University of Southern California (USC) to negotiate with their workers. In an editorial printed in the Los Angeles Times, Durazo compared the fast to those of United Farm Worker leader Cesar Chavez. “How could I ask others to work harder in the labor movement, to take even greater risks for their children and their co-workers, unless I was willing to fast side by side with them?” she wrote in explanation of the fast.

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No peace without social justice, 1992

Members of SEIU local 399, CIWA, the ILGWU, and other organizations march in the wake of the 1992 civil unrest.

Marchers carry signs and banners from a variety of Los Angeles community organizations and unions, including one from Local 399 reading “No Hay Paz sin Justicia Social” (No Peace without Social Justice). A handwritten note on the back of the photograph appears to read “J for J Rent Protest 5/92” suggesting a connection to the civil unrest of April 29-May 4, 1992.

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Jobs with Peace

Activists with the 1986 Los Angeles Jobs with Peace campaign hold signs for Proposition V outside the International Ladies Garment Workers union hall on MacArthur Park. The building is now the UCLA James M. Lawson, Jr. Worker Justice Center, home of the UCLA Labor Center.

How can progressive political movements win power in geographically expansive and multiracial cities like Los Angeles? The answer, according to the Los Angeles Jobs with Peace campaign was “coalition architecture,” an intentional strategy to link the interests of organized labor with the peace movement, the women’s movement, and the African American civil rights movement through the shared goal of creating good jobs for all by redirecting money from military to domestic spending. In 1984 and 1986, the campaign backed citywide ballot initiatives and built a network of supporters at the precinct level to turnout voters. The 1984 Proposition X called on the city to research and report on pension and contract funds that flowed to military contractors. It passed by a comfortable margin. Proposition V in 1986 would have established a commission to advise the city on how to redirect funds away from military contractors. Proposition V faced a well-funded opposition campaign from business interests and lost by a wide margin. Despite the defeat, the campaign built an effective get-out-the-vote operation at the precinct level that would be the basis of future progressive victories.

Continue reading “Jobs with Peace”
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Somma waterbed workers win back pay, 1985

A group of men raise their fists and make victory signs. Some hold paper checks.
ILGWU organizer Miguel Machuca (center, wearing a tie) and Somma waterbed factory workers celebrate back-pay awards ordered by the NLRB after the company illegally fired union activists.

In 1984, workers at the Somma waterbed factory in East Los Angeles began organizing fellow workers at neighborhood soccer games and decide to join the ILGWU. Most of the workers were immigrants from Mexico and Central America, many without documentation. Their employer was Angel Echevarria, a prominent figure in the Latino community and in Los Angeles politics. In January 1985, Somma workers voted 117-48 for a union. The company refused to negotiate with the workers and illegally fired more than 20 key union activists.

The ILGWU and the fired Somma workers held continuous pickets outside the factory, joined by other workers on their lunch breaks and by community supporters. They also launched a boycott of Somma waterbeds to bring their employer to the bargaining table. When the company fired another group of organizers, workers walked out on strike and won their jobs back. After a long delay, the NLRB ordered the fired workers rehired with back pay and upheld the union election over the companies objections.

A flyer calling for supporters of striking workers to attend a solidarity rally for Somma Waterbed workers.
A flyer publicizing a rally in support of striking workers at the Somma mattress factory in Los Angeles, 1985. En Español.

Sources: ILGWU Photographs, Box 3, Folder 9, Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives at the Cornell University Library. Rosalio Muñoz papers, Box 64, Folder 3, UCLA Library Department of Special Collections.