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Work and Employment

Books and videos are available for checkout. Contact us for more information about how to access and use our other materials.

Selected resources at the Southern California Library

  • Communities for Accountable Reinvestment Collection: Correspondence and reports of a coalition of L.A. community organizations in the late 1980s and early 1990s that advocated for responsible and equitable banking practices in the L.A. area; includes data on bank practices in the L.A. area.

  • Gilda Haas Collection: includes reports, pamphlets, periodicals and other materials on plant closures in Southern California.

  • Weingart Collection: numerous reports and other materials on the economy, poverty, homelessness, and welfare.

  • L.A. Subject Files: under several headings, including African American, Arts and Culture, Demographics, Housing, Korean Americans, Latino/a, Neighborhoods, and Regional Planning; includes reports, clippings, flyers, and more.

  • We Built This City: A Labor History Tour of Los Angeles: brochure produced by the Southern California Library.

  • Slobodan Dimitrov Labor Photo Collection: includes photos on L.A. labor movements, campaigns, and activists, primarily from the 1990s, including Justice for Janitors and the New Otani Hotel.

  • Labor Posters: posters on labor campaigns, United Farm Workers, worker struggles, and more, available for exhibits.

  • Justice for Janitors EyeWitness: documentary on the struggles of janitors in Los Angeles to organize for better working conditions and decent wages (1990).

  • Local 11 Campaign at the Hilton Hotel: documentary produced by Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (1994).

  • Salt of the Earth: classic film portraying the story of Chicano mine workers on strike (1953).

  • Tiger by the Tail: an award-winning documentary on the movement by workers and community activists that kept the GM Van Nuys plant open in L.A. for a full decade--before GM finally closed it in 1992.

Suggested Readings from Our Collections

  • Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle, Michael Keith Horne (1999)

  • The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closing, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry, Barry Blueston and Bennet Harrison (1982)

  • The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era, Jeremy Rifkin (1995)

  • Latinas and African American Women at Work: Race, Gender, and Economic Inequality, edited by Irene Browne (1999)

  • Power and the Division of Labor, Dietrich Rueschemeya (1986)

  • Prisoners of the American Dream, Mike Davis (1986)

  • Sweatshop Warriers: Immigrant Women Workers Take on the Global Factory, Miriam Ching Yoon Louie (2001).

See also material from our archives on work and employment.

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