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Report

Overworked & Under Pressure: A Study of Supermarket Workers in Los Angeles and Orange County Koreatowns

A new report highlights how Koreatown supermarket workers experience low and stagnant wages, unsafe working conditions, lacking health care benefits, and verbal abuse.

2025 Annual Snapshot

Cultivating Community Resilience

Through paid fellowships, community training, and public storytelling, the UCLA Labor Center turned research into action and prepared students and worker leaders to lead the worker justice movement.

Homecoming Event

UCLA Labor Center James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center Homecoming

Please mark your calendar for Thursday, April 23, 2026 and reserve your ticket(s) to join us in celebrating the UCLA Labor Center’s James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center homecoming.

Report

Harm to Table: Vulnerability and Exploitation in Los Angeles County Meatpacking and Food Processing

Los Angeles County has long been a hub for meatpacking and food processing, but decades of corporate consolidation and deregulation have reshaped the industry. This report highlights how industry practices undermine health and safety, and workers’ rights.

Report

High Stakes: The State of the California Cannabis Workforce

This report shares important trends that confirm the potential of cannabis to contribute to California’s growth, well-being, and environmental change, as well as challenges that must be addressed head-on.

Impact Brief
2025 UC Labor Centers Impact Brief

A first-of-its-kind UC labor center network—now spanning nine campuses—continues to advance worker-focused research, education, and leadership development. This brief highlights their 2025 achievements.

Blog Post
Building Binational Farmworker Collaborations: Lessons from San Quintín

The UCLA Labor Center and farmworker labor rights advocates examine the growing impact of the H-2A temporary agricultural worker program and its implications for farmworker communities.

60 Years of Worker Justice

Established in 1964, the UCLA Labor Center advances cutting-edge research, education, and service guided by our core values: economic equity, racial and immigrant justice, and worker power and solidarity.

About Us
A Public University Belongs to the People
A Public University Belongs to the People

Through our signature approaches and methodology that employ research justice, narrative storytelling, student and leader-to-movement pathways, and culturally and racially responsive evaluation, we partner with workers, unions, worker centers, students, and impacted communities to advance economic justice across California, the nation and globally.

Re:Work Podcast at the UCLA Labor Center

Autoqueen Trilogy, Part I

Autoqueen Trilogy, Part One features Mohana Sundari, a thirty-nine-year-old woman living in Tamil Nadu in southern India. Mohana is part of a small but growing group of women driving auto rickshaws in the capital city of Chennai. Many, even in India, are unaware that women drivers like Mohana exist.

From an early age, Mohana has questioned and pushed against the limits placed on girls and women, forging her own path. The first installment in a three-part series, this episode explores Mohana’s family background and childhood, and the roots of her fiercely independent spirit.

We are no longer publishing new episodes on SoundCloud, but please listen here, at reworkradio.org, or your preferred podcast platform.

This episode was produced in partnership with Empowering Communities Through Education (ECTE). ECTE leads grassroots, worker-centered initiatives that use education, research, and storytelling to support economic justice and civic transformation in Chennai. To learn more about ECTE, please visit ectefoundation.org.

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