On Wednesday, top leaders of Brazil's largest trade union federation, Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT), including President Vagner Freitas, João Felicio and Artur Henrique, met with U.S. union leaders at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., to discuss strategies for joint action, priorities and partnerships moving forward.

Nissan technician Betty Jones sent this message to working family activists today:

I’m a technician at the Nissan plant in Canton, Miss., and I’m proud to work there. I want our company to succeed, and I never give anything less than my best.
And that’s one of the reasons my co-workers and I are organizing for a voice on the job. We believe that by organizing collectively we can work together with Nissan to make the company and our community better.

As part of a six-day worldwide labor solidarity campaign, American union members protested outside the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., yesterday in support of greater trade union rights and protections in Mexico.

As the launch of the AFL-CIO’s new online hub @Work continues, today we are highlighting union members’ commitment to producing the highest quality of products and services. This is one of the seven categories of the new site.

Union members have been called many stereotypes over the years: thugs, relics, selfish—the list goes on. But the truth is union members are people who work and make contributions to their communities every day. Union members are innovating on the job and training the next generation of skilled workers, among many other things.

One of the most oft-repeated lessons of the 2012 election is that America's growing population of immigrants is a force to be reckoned with. While many of us in the labor movement have known this for a long time, recently released figures drive this lesson home—bucking the national trend, California has witnessed rising union membership largely due to organizing drives in sectors with high immigrant populations, including home care aides, car wash workers and scientific researchers. This powerful partnership between the labor and immigrant communities is key to strengthening the worker's rights movement and will be a major factor in immigration reform.

In a near party-line vote, the North Carolina House of Representatives gave preliminary approval to a bill that would harm many of the state's more vulnerable citizens by cutting back on unemployment insurance. The measure would cut maximum weekly benefits by one-third, bringing the top weekly payout to $350, and reduce the maximum length an unemployed worker can get from 26 weeks to 20. As the bill currently stands, 80,000 workers are set to lose unemployment insurance payments.

Unlike Las Vegas, what happens in Mississippi won’t stay in Mississippi, as far as Nissan is concerned. 

The president of the largest labor federation in Brazil, representing 7.4 million workers, got a close-up look at the situation in Canton, Miss., last week, when he attended the meeting at Tougaloo College that was attended by nearly 500 people, along with the Mississippi Alliance for Fairness at Nissan (MAFFAN). 

Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts and nine other union members were arrested in front of Peabody Energy’s corporate headquarters in St. Louis yesterday, as more than 750 members and retirees sang Amazing Grace and held signs calling for fairness. Several of those arrested had oxygen tanks, and many in the crowd were brought to tears as the arrested protesters were peacefully loaded into the sheriff’s van while Which Side Are You On played on the loudspeakers. The protesters arrived at Peabody after marching from federal bankruptcy court, where Patriot Coal’s lawyers were inside. Those arrested were released later in the day, according to the St. Louis City Division of Corrections. 

Show your solidarity Super Bowl Sunday by not only cheering on your favorite NFL Players Association (NFLPA) members on the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens, but also buying union-made-in-America food and drinks for your party. Check out these union-made Super Bowl party products, compiled by our friends at Labor 411, the union business directory from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Food and drinks are brought to you by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM), the UAW, Machinists (IAM), Teamsters (IBT) and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).