Standing at the center of the “Honoring All Veterans Memorial” that was dedicated Monday in Richfield, Minn., is a bronze statue of longtime Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 292 member and World War II veteran Chuck Lindberg, who raised the first U.S. flag on Iwo Jima on Feb. 23, 1945.

Most of us know the iconic image captured by photographer Joe Rosenthal that was recreated for the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va. But earlier that day Lindberg and several other Marines, after four days of bloody combat, were the first patrol to make it to the top of Mount Suribachi.

It wasn't a Rolling Stones concert that drew 800 men and women to camp out for five days in Queens, N.Y., it was the chance at landing a coveted union job opening. 

The New York Times reported a union elevator mechanic job prompted nearly 1,000 young workers to haul out tents and mattresses and weather the great outdoors of Long Island City at the chance to be considered. 

Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 3 handed out applications for its apprentice program. 

She said she’d get a Mohawk. She got a Mohawk.

“I’m sporting a new ‘do,’” says Alice Phillips, business manager for Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 483 of Tacoma, Wash. “It feels…light. It’s different.”

The shaved head and spiked hair came about because Phillips wanted her union local to double last year’s donation of union-made peanut butter as part of the Letter Carriers’ (NALC's) National Food Drive. The 21st annual drive to combat hunger is the nation’s largest single-day food drive and is held annually on the second Saturday in May in 10,000 cities and towns in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In 2012, letter carriers collected 70 million pounds of food donations along their postal routes.

We’re following the story of Hannah Cooper, an apprentice with Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 11 in Los Angeles. Here’s her latest report and check out her first entry.

For the past year and a half, ­­I’ve had the great fortune of working on the new addition to the Tom Bradley International Terminal at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). In the first two years of my electrical apprenticeship with IBEW Local 11, I worked on small jobs for small shops that had a very limited scope of work, so there weren’t very many aspects of the trade I had exposure to, much to my disappointment.

At a time when income inequality is rising and the middle class is shrinking, Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 569 and the San Diego County Building and Construction Trades Council are doing their part to help working families not only survive, but thrive in the face of significant economic obstacles. The Southern California-based unions operate the National City Park Apartments, which support low- to moderate-income families by providing affordable housing in a nice, but expensive, neighborhood.

Over the next few months, we'll be following the story of Hannah Cooper, an apprentice with Electrical Workers (IBEW). Check out her first entry below:

My entire life my mother has been a union electrician—a fact of life I never thought to question. It was where she spent her days while I was growing up, and it gave her the means to support our family. Although I understood and in my own way appreciated this fact, it never once occurred to me when considering potential career paths. I had this idea that I was going to make a career for myself in the arts and spend my time traveling the world as a dancer—maybe do some part-time modeling for supplemental income—acquire a bachelor's degree at a four-year university back East and maybe try to join a dance company. This was the plan anyways, from my early years of childhood up through the first half of my senior year of high school, when I realized I didn’t want to be a dancer anymore. I stopped showing up to my college auditions, completely throwing a wrench in the plan.

Members of the Reagan High School band stopped rush hour traffic yesterday in front of the federal building in Austin, Texas, along with hundreds of advocates, community leaders, families and construction workers, as they celebrated the Workers Defense Project’s (WDP's) biannual Day of the Fallen.

Hundreds of Omaha, Neb., area residents worked up a sweat to raise money for the Omaha-area Energy Assistance Program. Union members from Electrical Workers (IBEW) locals 1483 and 1521 and the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM) Local 70-558 participated in the Heartland Walk for Warmth.

“Training” is the spotlight category today, as the launch of the AFL-CIO online hub @Work continues.

The recently opened Chobani yogurt plant—the world’s largest—in Twin Falls, Idaho, and several major construction projects—including a new steel mill—in the Youngstown, Ohio, area have been a boon for the skilled Electrical Workers (IBEW) members there who have been a blessing for the construction managers tasked with getting the jobs done quickly and efficiently.