While most states saw a decline in union membership in 2012, California bucked the trend as 100,000 new workers joined collective bargaining units. Pushing the growth were Latino workers and nurses, the Los Angeles Times reported today. Overall, 11.3% of America's workers are current union members, which is a smaller percentage from 2011, but in California, the number is closer to 18% and is growing. Other southwestern states, such as Nevada and Texas, are also seeing growth in union membership.

Construction workers and others in the Austin, Texas, area are celebrating a coalition victory this week after Travis County commissioners approved a first-ever economic development policy that includes a living wage requirement.

The policy requires contractors asking for tax incentives to move into the county to pay all employees at least $11 per hour. It’s a significant improvement over the prevailing construction hourly wage of $7.50.

In a major win for nurses, patients and three Texas communities, registered nurses (RNs) in El Paso, Corpus Christi and Brownsville gave final approval to contracts yesterday in first-ever collective bargaining agreements, reports National Nurses United (NNU). 

One of the important consumer protections of the Affordable Care Act—the health care reform law that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want to repeal—is that health insurance companies must clearly tell people what their policies cover and what they don’t when it comes to treatments, services and providers. 

In Texas, the withdrawal, by the state insurance commissioner, of new rules that would have helped consumers know if they were facing huge out-of-network costs when they are hospitalized shows why those protections in the Affordable Care Act are needed.

Cristina Tzintzun, executive director of the Workers Defense Project, and Michael Cunningham, executive director and secretary/treasurer of the Texas State Building and Construction Trades Council, send us this. 

Few construction labor leaders have ever thought of Texas as an easy place to organize. The state legislature is controlled by a super majority of Republicans that are sternly anti-immigrant and anti-worker. Construction business interests have a firm grip on the legislature. The biggest Republican donor in the state is Bob Perry, of Perry Homes, one of the largest home builders in Texas. That is why the efforts of unions and community groups to reform the construction industry in the state are so significant.

Good news in from Texas. This from Think Progress:

A federal judge in Texas has blocked a key provision of the state’s recent voter suppression law that limited the ability of outside groups to register new voters.

The law, which was passed by the Republican-held legislature in an emergency session last year, placed new restrictions on groups like the League of Women Voters, making it significantly more difficult for them to register voters. The law also imposed a strict voter ID requirement for the state, which has since been blocked by the Department of Justice.

BP is slated to pay a hefty fine for willful violations of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) process safety management standard at its refinery in Texas City, Texas: $13,027,000.

The exodus from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) continues as the glare of a hot spotlight exposes the group’s radical agenda that ranges from voter suppression to union busting and immigrant bashing. Candy maker Mars Inc. and Arizona's largest energy company are the latest corporations to sever ties.

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.

Instead of getting angry over labor issues, have fun and project that fun through social media, two nationally known progressives told an audience of activists at Texas AFL-CIO headquarters.

Justin Krebs, a “political and cultural entrepreneur” who co-founded Living Liberally and wrote 538 Ways to Live, Work and Play Like a Liberal, and Negin Farsad, a comedian and filmmaker named one of the “50 Funniest Women” by Huffington Post, said humor and the use of networks like Twitter can reach people who might not have been disposed to listen to a drier union message.

“Comedy can be a Trojan horse, in a way,” Krebs said, during a workshop held as part of labor’s “Work Connects Us All” activities during the South by Southwest music, film and interactive festivals in Austin.