This is an excerpt from a cross-post at the California Labor Federation by Melinda Burns, Teamsters Graphic Communications Conference.

The National Labor Relations Board last week ordered the Santa Barbara News-Press to reinstate me and seven other reporters who were illegally fired nearly five years ago, after our newsroom voted to unionize. I was the first to be escorted out of the building in October 2006, one month after we voted overwhelmingly to join the union. I was a senior writer, I had been at the paper for 21 years, and I had won local, state, regional and national awards for the paper with my reporting.

AFL-CIO Community Services Director Will Fischer reports on the flood relief efforts unions are mounting in Montana.

Montana has been hit hard by a series of recent severe storms coupled with runoff from mountain snow melt. The combination has caused serious flooding across the state. Forty-eight of the state’s 56 counties have declared flood emergencies and federal disaster declarations have been issued for 31 counties, plus four American Indian reservations.

The Machinists (IAM) approved a new contract with Army Fleet Support, and more news from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 1,300 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.

After the November elections, with its raft of new Republicans in governors’ seats and  in control of state legislatures, we’ve seen many of those states implement a corporate agenda that includes attacks on workers’ rights, new corporate tax cuts and privatization of state services.

With Major League Baseball’s 2011 season under way, our friends at the Alliance for American Manufacturing remind us that the all-American pastime still features some Made-in-USA sports gear.

Today marks the 23rd day Indiana teachers, public employees and other workers have been at the state Capitol protesting more than 30 bills backed by Republican lawmakers and Gov. Mitch Daniels (R). The legislative package includes bills that slash public school budgets, defund women’s health care and eliminate public-sector unions.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), New Jersey Chris Christie (R) and politicians around the nation are running campaigns to demonize public employees and lay the blame for state budget problems at their feet.