This afternoon a federal judge in Wisconsin struck down two parts of Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011 anti-worker law that eliminated collective bargaining rights for public workers.

U.S. District Court Judge William Conley ruled against the provision that eliminated payroll deduction for public-sector workers' union dues. He also ruled against the section that required unions to win 51 percent support of all employees in units they are certified to represent during annual recertification votes, instead of the majority of employees who voted. Under the requirement of Walker's law, all those who did not vote were to be counted as "no" votes. 

Members of the Screen Actors (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) have overwhelmingly approved merging their unions into one, SAG/AFTRA, the unions announced this afternoon in Los Angeles.

Just over a year ago, the 2010 midterm elections saw Republicans seize control of both branches of the legislatures in 11 states. Then, while talking up the notion of job creation, they set about cutting their state and local public workforces with a ferocity unseen in decades.  The most recent numbers, according to the Roosevelt Institute, are stark.

The 11 states are Alabama, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Together, they eliminated 87,900 state and local public jobs—more than 40 percent of the total cut.

This afternoon on César Chávez day, Pomona College (Calif.) students, workers and union and community activists are taking to the streets in a unique Dining Hall in the Streets action. The event will support the 16 immigrant workers the college fired in December from their long-held dining hall jobs as they were trying to form a union with UNITE HERE Local 11.

The Republican-controlled Georgia state legislature ended its session. In a victory for working families—and for the Bill of Rights—the anti-free speech bill (S.B. 469), that brought union, faith and tea party activists together to protest the proposal to subject picketers to big fines, died. But not before lawmakers, in a last-ditch attempt to pass the bill in some form, stripped the picketing provisions and turned S.B. 469 into a purely anti-union bill that would affect dues deduction for public employees. But the bipartisan coalition opposed to the S.B. 469 held firm, and lawmakers decided not to take up the bill.

But the victory was bittersweet. Republicans still managed to pass bills that cut jobless benefits severely and require some welfare applicants to pass drug tests.

How can American manufacturers stay competitive in the age of globalization?

By investing in America's workers.

That was the gist of the New Markets and Organizing forum at the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO's convention this past week.

The scandal at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) involving Mitt Romney’s labor adviser, former NLRB member Peter Schaumber, and current NLRB member Terence Flynn gives Romney a great chance to show whether he values ethics in government or dirty, inside-Washington politics.  

If you want to help Romney decide to do the right thing, click here to sign a petition calling on him to fire Schaumber and renounce the ethics violations.