This is a cross-post from the California Labor Federation's blog, Labor's Edge, by Danielle Tipton. 

Latinos are among the fastest growing groups of the electorate. About 5 million more Latino voters are eligible to vote this year than in 2008—but historically, voter turnout among Latinos hasn’t been particularly strong. In 2008, only 50% of eligible Latino voters showed up to the polls (according to the Los Angeles Times). But that’s all going to change this year in California, as more and more Latinos are discovering what’s really at stake in the upcoming election if Prop. 32 becomes law.

Maybe this election year will finally put a stake through the heart of efforts by corporations and extremist right-wing millionaires to silence the voice of California's working families in the political arena.

This year, it’s called Prop. 32 and it’s a near-clone of 2005’s Prop. 75 and 1998’s Prop. 226, which voters defeated by a 53% margin. Both times huge mobilizations by working families turned back the millions of dollars from Republican PACs and corporate and anti-worker extremists. These are the same groups that are behind Prop. 32.          

Billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch could be the poster boys for the big money special interests that are dumping hundreds of millions of dollars in this year’s elections on the national and state levels. Last week, it was reported that the American Future Fund (AFF), a front group for corporate special interests that’s linked to the Kochs, dropped $4 million into the effort to pass California’s Prop. 32.

This is a cross-post from Labor's Edge by Rebecca Band of the California Labor Federation.

For decades, performers have been coming together in unions to bargain for fair protections and decent working conditions. And this year, actors and performers took their collective voice to the next level by voting overwhelmingly to merge the two biggest entertainment and media industry unions—Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)—into one big union, SAG-AFTRA. Actress Gabrielle Carteris, who starred as Andrea Zuckerman on the original series Beverly Hills, 90210, has been actively involved with the merger for nearly two years, a process which she describes as “exciting, challenging, inspiring and historic.” Carteris spoke with Labor's Edge for a Q and A on the merger and her involvement in the labor movement. 

This is a cross-post from the California Labor Federation's blog, Labor's Edge, by Danielle Tipton. 

There is no issue more important in California and America right now than jobs. All of us know someone struggling to find one—you might even be struggling to find one yourself. So why is our tax money helping to ship jobs to other countries?

This is a cross-post from the California Labor Federation's Labor's Edge blog.

California was built with a vision that prioritized investments in our future. From creating a world-class infrastructure to seeding innovation through our schools and universities, investments fueled the economic miracle that once was our state. But as those investments dried up in recent years, we’ve risked tearing the very fabric of California.

It’s time to chart a different course.

[On Tuesday], the California Labor Federation and the state Building and Construction Trades Council unveiled labor’s new “Invest in California” jobs plan, which focuses on renewing the state’s commitment to innovation and investments that built an economy of broadly shared prosperity.

Concerned over the erosion of quality of care and cuts to patient protections, some 6,000 nurses have been on a one-day strike today at California’s second largest private hospital and at one of its most profitable corporate hospital chains.

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.

This is a cross-post from the California Federation of Labor by Communications Director Steve Smith.

When Wisconsin’s new right-wing governor decided to make it his personal mission to eliminate the rights of teachers, nurses, bus drivers and other public servants, he probably thought it would be a cakewalk. After all, Gov. Scott Walker has a Republican-controlled legislature that is on board with his radical plan to eliminate collective bargaining for public-sector workers. What he didn’t count on was the extraordinary resolve of working people to stop his assault on our values. For more than a week, tens of thousands have protested at the Wisconsin Capitol. The fight back spread to Ohio, Indiana and other states where politicians are attempting to strip workers of their voice. And it didn’t stop there. All over the country, workers are standing in solidarity to beat back these attacks.

California Labor Federation Legislative Advocate Mitch Seaman points out how California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa is busy catering to his rich corporate donors rather than representing the people in his congressional district.