State of the Unions: California Labor in 2025 Webinar Series
Date and Time: September 9, 2026, 12-1:30 pm PST
Location: Virtual
In 2025, the Trump administration unleashed a series of anti-labor and anti-immigrant policies that dramatically impacted working families in the U.S. and in California. Coming soon from the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE), the “State of the Unions” report tracks how workers and unions responded to this critical moment.
The UCLA IRLE invites you to join labor experts and organizers for a timely panel discussion on how workers and unions fought back against threats to organizing rights at the NLRB in 2025 and continued to grow their ranks.
This is the first installment of a series of webinars on the “State of the Unions.” Stay tuned for more details on Part II.
Speakers
Memo Durgin: Guillermo “Memo” Durgin is the Organizing Director for the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO. Prior to joining the Federation, Memo worked as a union organizer for twenty-five years with multiple unions, representing teachers, state workers and immigrant service workers. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Chicano Studies from the University of California Davis, and completed a master’s program in Ethnic Studies at California State University Sacramento.
David Rosenfeld: David Rosenfeld has been practicing union-side labor law since his graduation from UC Berkeley School of Law in 1973, where he also taught labor law courses for many years. He has argued approximately 250 cases before federal and state courts of appeal, the United States Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court and the National Labor Relations Board. Rosenfeld is an author of preeminent reference guides for workers and unions, including “California Workers’ Rights,” “Hey, the Boss Called Just Called Me Into the Office,” published by UC Berkeley and “The Campaign Guide: Organizing and Contract Enforcement in the Construction Industry,” published by the North America’s Building Trades Unions.
Amber Gonzalez: Amber Gonzalez is a worker organizer with Starbucks Workers United. Gonzalez has worked at Starbucks for 4 years in Riverside, CA, where she and her coworkers won a union election in summer 2025, then joined a months-long national strike protesting Starbucks’ unfair labor practices. She is currently completing her undergrad in political science at UC Irvine.
Justin McBride: Justin McBride is a project director at the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) and a main author of the “State of the Unions: California Labor in 2025” report. McBride is a labor studies scholar who writes about public finance and the intersections between public policy and worker organizing. He received his PhD in Urban Planning from the UCLA Department of Urban Planning and has worked for over 15 years as a labor organizer.
Date and Time: September 23, 2026, 12-1:30 pm PST
Location: Virtual
Successful drives to form new unions may generate buzz and media attention, but the most meaningful change happens after the first battle is won—in employer negotiations. For many workers, forming a union is only the beginning of a longer effort to improve work standards and conditions.
Just 1 in 2 bargaining units formed in California in 2024 had achieved a union contract by Spring 2026, according to a new study from a team of researchers at UC Labor Centers. The study is included in the annual “State of the Unions” report from the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE).
The UCLA IRLE and UCLA Labor Center invite you to join labor experts and organizers for an illuminating panel discussion on workers’ prolonged fights to secure a first union contract.
Caitlin Vega, Chief of Staff at the California Labor Federation, Peter Finn, Vice President of the Teamsters, and Jim Araby, Director of Strategic Campaigns at UFCW Local 5, will join leaders and staff from Labor Centers at UC locations across the state to discuss challenges to achieving a first contract and strategies to address them.
Speakers
Caitlin Vega: Caitlin Vega serves as General Counsel for the California Labor Federation. The daughter of a laborer, she joined the labor movement as an organizer when she was eighteen. After working for Teamsters Local 490 and SEIU Local 614, she spent sixteen years at the California Labor Federation, where she served as Legislative Director. Caitlin is a labor lawyer, specializing in legislative efforts to combat misclassification and the fissured workplace. Among her achievements, she was the lead lobbyist on the landmark bill AB 5 in 2019, codifying the “ABC test” of employment status.
Caitlin worked her way through California State University, Hayward, majoring in Sociology and Latin American Studies. She attended UC Davis School of Law. She is a member of the Union Lawyers Alliance of the AFL-CIO and the Labor & Employment Section of the California State Bar. She was named an Influencer by the Sacramento Bee. Her chapters on working as a labor lobbyist were published in A Practitioner’s Guide to Lobbying and Advocacy in California (Kendall-Hunt, 2019) and Perspectives on State Lobbying in California: Essays by Advocates in California’s Capitol (Kendall-Hunt, 2022).
In all her work, she is guided by the memory of her dad who taught her to never give up hope that a better world is possible.
Peter Finn: Peter Finn is the Vice President of the Teamsters. Raised in a union family with a grandfather who was a proud rank-and-file Teamster, Peter Finn’s Teamster career started as a Local 856 member and shop steward more than 20 years ago in San Francisco. He later served as a business agent and Vice President of the Local and, in 2013, became the Principal Officer and Secretary-Treasurer. Under his leadership, Local 856’s membership has more than doubled in size to over 17,000 members strong, representing workers in a wide range of industries, including airline, public sector, health care, hospitality, freight, package and food processing.
Jim Araby: Jim Araby is the Director of Strategic Campaigns for UFCW Local 5, a 25,000-member union based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works across Northern California to build political, organizing and bargaining power for workers in the grocery, retail, retail drug, cannabis, coffee, bookstore, outdoor retail and agricultural industries. Araby leads UFCW Local 5’s strategic campaign work, including political campaigns, coalition building, legislative advocacy, communications and new worker organizing.
Moderators
Saba Waheed, Director, UCLA Labor Center
Marcos Lopez, Research Director, UC Davis Labor Center
Satomi Rash-Zeigler, Director, UC San Diego Labor Center
Brianna Velasco, Program Coordinator, UC Berkeley Labor Center
Fall Webinar Series: Meeting the Moment, Building the Movement
How should the labor movement respond to the federal government’s attacks on immigrant communities, threats of election interference and the erosion of collective bargaining rights? Join the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) as multiple generations of organizers break down labor’s struggle–past and present–to advance multi-racial democracy when those in power resist.
Part 1– Proposition 187: Labor’s Fight for Immigrant Rights
Date and Time: October 9, 2026, 10-11:30 PDT
Location: Virtual
Against the backdrop of unemployment and civil unrest in the early 1990s, California Republicans offered voters a simple, brutal solution: criminalize undocumented immigrants. Proposition 187, a statewide voter initiative, threatened to exclude immigrants from all public services and to enlist teachers, neighbors and faith leaders into the machinery of deportation. Labor unions were initially unsure how to respond, but when unions joined the fight against Proposition 187, they changed the direction of California politics.
In this virtual panel event, three veterans of the campaign to stop Proposition 187 will discuss how the moment forged coalitions between immigrant rights and labor organizers that set the stage for a historic shift in organized labor’s policy on undocumented workers. Cristina Ramirez-Vazquez, Former Regional Manager and International Vice President of Workers United, Dave Sickler, former Western Regional Director of AFL-CIO, and Joel Ochoa, labor and community organizer, will share their expertise.
Speakers
Cristina Ramirez-Vazquez: Cristina Ramirez-Vazquez began working as a union organizer with the ILGWU (International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union) in 1976. Largely recognized as the first union to embrace immigrant workers, the ILGWU merged with ACTWU in the 1980s to form UNITE! Ramirez-Vazquez became the first Latin American Immigrant to be International Vice President of UNITE! and Regional Manager of the Western States Regional Joint Board. Ramirez-Vazquez was instrumental in mobilizing her union to become one of the driving forces behind the fight against Prop 187. Recognizing the importance of broad commitment to the struggle, also coordinated the No On Proposition 187 outreach effort that organized a broad swath of communities and immigrant-advocacy organizations into a unified campaign. Ramirez-Vazquez has dedicated her life to organizing garment workers, warehouse workers and industrial laundry workers to secure better working conditions and dignity in the workplace. Now retired, Ramirez-Vazquez is still active with Workers United, working to improve medical benefits for the members of the union.
David Sickler: David Sickler, retired Western Regional Director of the AFL-CIO, spearheaded the effort to get local and national labor leaders to recognize the importance of defending immigrant workers. Following passage of the Immigration Reform Act in 1988, he established the Labor Immigrant Assistance Project and the AFL-CIO California Immigrant Workers’ Association. Sickler was a key figure in arguing for labor participation in the mass march against Proposition 187 on October 16, 1994. In his long career, Sickler also served as the senior labor advisor to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, as Commissioner of Public Works and as Executive Director of Employment Relations at the L.A. Department of Water and Power. Beginning in 2009, Sickler was Southern Regional Director of The California State Building and Construction Trades Council. Sickler also served as Chair of the UCLA Center for Labor and Research advisory committee.
Joel Ochoa: Joel Ochoa is a retired labor and community organizer. He came to the United States from Mexico in 1973, a political refugee forced from his country because of the campaign of massacres, violent assaults and arrests waged by the administration of then-president Luis Echeverría against participants in the student protest movement. On the community level in the U.S., Ochoa worked for the pioneering labor and community organization, CASA, organizing immigrant workers and their families to fight for unconditional amnesty for all undocumented immigrants. In the early 90’s he worked closely with the workers during the American Racing Equipment and the Drywall fights for union recognition in the LA Metro area. Those campaigns helped bring about change in the labor movement in Southern California, making it more inclusive and militant. Joining forces with the AFL-CIO’s California Immigrant Workers Association (CIWA), Ochoa worked tirelessly in 1994 to enlist labor unions and community organizations into the resistance against Prop 187. From 1997 to 2014 he was an International Representative for the International Association of Machinists.
Part 2– Labor Strategies to Defend Immigrant Worker Rights Today
Date and Time: October 16, 2026, 10-11:30 PDT
Location: Virtual
Part 2 of the “Meeting the Moment” series brings together three leaders at the forefront of labor and community responses to the current militarized federal immigration 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 communities.
The virtual panel will welcome David Huerta, President of SEIU California and SEIU-United Service Workers West (USWW), Bernie Burnham, President of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, and Kurt Petersen, Vice President of UNITE HERE Local 11, to share their insights as leaders of the movement.
Speakers
David Huerta, President, SEIU California and SEIU-United Service Workers West (USWW): David Huerta is a veteran labor organizer and the president of SEIU California and SEIU–United Service Workers West, representing hundreds of thousands of janitors, security officers and service workers. He began his career in the 1990s as an organizer with Justice for Janitors in Los Angeles and has been recognized for his leadership in immigrant integration and worker empowerment. In June 2025, while serving as a peaceful community observer during an ICE raid in downtown Los Angeles, Huerta was injured and arrested on felony charges of conspiring to impede a federal officer. After protests by union members, civil rights groups and Democratic leaders, he was released three days later after posting a $50,000 bond. This moment cemented his reputation as a steadfast advocate for labor and immigrant rights, and as a symbol of resistance to federal overreach.
Bernie Burnham, President, MN AFL-CIO:Bernie Burnham became President of the Minnesota AFL-CIO in 2021 in a history-making election. As a Pacific-Islander, she is the first person of color to head the state’s labor federation. During Operation Metro Surge, she led Minnesota’s labor movement in coalition with community and religious organizations in the fight against ICE’s brutal assault on immigrant rights, worker rights, and the deaths of innocent Minnesotans. The struggle is ongoing as labor stands up to the administration’s continued weaponization of the federal government to intimidate unions, communities, and anyone who peacefully opposes its radical authoritarian agenda.
Kurt Petersen, Co-president, UNITE HERE Local 11: Kurt Petersen is a Co-President of UNITE HERE Local 11, which represents 35,000 hotel and food service workers in Southern California and Arizona. Petersen studied Theology/Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and attended Yale Law School. He went on to win the first union contract for farm workers in Washington State history at Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery with the United Farm Workers. Since moving to Los Angeles in 1995, he has organized more than 25,000 workers into UNITE HERE. Most recently, Petersen led the largest hotel strike in the nation’s history, and won a life-changing contract with 50% wage increases, including groundbreaking language that gave workers the right to strike if the activity of ICE or Border Control threatened worker safety during the 2026 World Cup. Local 11’s hotel and stadium contracts will expire in January 2028, months before the Olympics. Petersen, along with his Co-Presidents Ada Briceno and Susan Minato, was recently named in the Los Angeles Times 2024 LA Influential list.
Moderator of Part I & Part II
Gaspar Rivera-Salgado: Gaspar Rivera-Salgado is currently project director at UCLA Labor Center and labor studies lecturer at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. He is also the Director of the UCLA Center for Mexican Studies. He teaches classes on work, labor and social justice in the US and immigration issues. Among his publications include the volume (with J. Fox) Indigenous Mexican Migration in the United States (UCSD 2005); and the recently published volume (with E. Telles, and M. Sawyer) Just Neighbors: Research on African American and Latino Relations in the United States (Russell Sage, 2011). He received his doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
