An editorial in the South Jersey Times calls on the U.S. Senate to approve President Barack Obama's nominations to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to ensure nurses at Memorial Hospital of Salem County have their rights to collective bargaining protected.  More than two years ago, the nurses voted to form a union and attempted to enter into contract negotiations with Community Health Systems (CHS), the owner of the hospital.  CHS refused to recognize the union and the appealed the election to the NLRB. The case remains in limbo because of a federal appeals court decision that is obstructing the work of the NLRB by severely limiting the president's authority to make recess appointments when Congress won't act on nominees. 

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has released a lot of important research about the economy in the last few weeks.  Here's a look at some of the key pieces it uncovered about the U.S. economy.

Rhode Island appears set to become the third state to require paid family leave for private employees after the State House approved the legislation on Tuesday.  The bill passed the Senate several days ago. The Senate has to approve a technical change in the House bill and then the legislation goes on to Gov. Lincoln Chafee (D), who is expected to sign it.  

The workplace rights of millions of working people will be at risk if the U.S. Senate does not approve President Obama’s five bipartisan nominees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). On July 10, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will join Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) for a discussion of the NLRB’s role as an advocate for all U.S. workers, how the board can function in the face of Republican attempts to prevent it from doing its job and potential Senate rule changes to end the obstructionism that’s blocking NLRB nominees.

Joe Corbin and Susan Kelleher, married Theatrical Stage Employees stagehands from Local 22, talk about preparing for this year's "A Capitol Fourth" celebration on the West Lawn of the Capitol.

Check out UAW President Bob King's new editorial in The Detroit News on the future of the worker-employer relationship. King says it’s time for foreign automakers to grant workers at their American factories the same right to form unions and collectively bargain that workers have in the automakers' home countries.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D) vetoed a bill on Tuesday that would've created a database of information on all Missouri residents who have filed workers' compensation claims for workplace injuries. The database would have made the personal information of the program filers available to private employers. Nixon said the proposed database is an "affront" to the privacy rights of the state's citizens.

On Saturday, the AFL-CIO joined a coalition led by the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) in an international day of action to pressure Walmart and Gap to stop the use of unsafe factories that have killed more than 1,800 workers in Bangladesh since 2005. To date, the two corporate giants have refused to sign on to a legally binding Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh that would go a long way toward making workers in Bangladesh safer.

More information is coming out about the Supreme Court decision that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Last week, we reported Lambda Legal's advice about the ruling and what it means. Now we have specific details about how the decision affects federal employees, coming from the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, Elaine Kaplan.

Over at AlterNet, Richard Eskow has a great article highlighting hard-to-believe facts about American corporate tax dodging that will probably make you angry. For instance, did you know that corporate tax rates are at a 60-year low at the same time that corporate profits are at a 60-year high? Or, that as part of the extreme lengths companies go through to avoid paying taxes in the United States, one building in the Cayman Islands is the officially registered headquarters for nearly 19,000 corporations?