This just in: There is now a tentative agreement between the United Steelworkers (USW) and Cooper Tire & Rubber Co., with a vote expected on Monday.

Since 2009, more than 1,500 employees of four Hyatt hotels in Chicago have been fighting for a fair contract. Now the company is threatening to strip away their health coverage if they don’t abandon their fight and call off their boycotts.

The attacks on the middle class and the ability of public employees to bargain collectively are spreading from Wisconsin and Ohio to Long Island’s Nassau County, where a proposed bill would gives the county executive the right to unilaterally open contracts and decide what provisions the executive wants to retain, change or eliminate.

Hundreds of Verizon workers who have been striking for middle-class jobs last night took their message to the posh upper-class New Jersey neighborhood where Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam lives, to “mourn the death of good middle-class jobs.”

Liz McElroy of the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO and AFL-CIO field communications staffer Nora Frederickson send us this report about a Verizon action in Philadelphia.

As 45,000 members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and Electrical Workers (IBEW) on the East Coast continue their strike against Verizon to maintain quality, middle-class jobs, union locals in southeastern Pennsylvania decided to take their message directly to the public – at the local ballgame.

UPDATE: Tomorrow morning, Aug. 8, thousands of striking workers will join mass picket lines and rallies at more than 100 Verizon work locations across New York and New Jersey to push the highly profitable company to back off its sweeping demands. The list of picket lines and rallies is here.

And in the Washington, D.C., area, you can show your support for striking workers at a mobilization rally Monday at noon at the Chesapeake Complex, 13100 Columbia Pike, Silver Spring.

Teresa Casertano in the AFL-CIO Organizing Department’s Global Campaigns section reports on upcoming contract negotiations at Bayer.

With a contract that expires on Aug. 24, more than 420 workers at the Berkeley facility of the giant Bayer pharmaceutical and health care conglomerate have been preparing for bargaining for several months with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 6.  Union leaders have held trainings for rank-and-file leaders, collected suggestions for bargaining proposals and held house meetings to prepare members for action to back up the bargaining team.