Cruise on over to our AFL-CIO home page for two new features that spotlight an innovative training program from Chicago Plumbers and Pipe Fitters Local 597 (UA) and a look at the creative campaign music video dancers are waging for a fair contract.

Plumbers and Steamfitters (UA) Local 184 and West Kentucky Community and Technical College (WKCTC) earned national recognition for partnering to provide a unique "going green" training program for the union's apprentices and journeymen. The Paducah, Ky., union and school plan to follow up with a two-year college degree program for Local 184 members.

The AFL-CIO Working for America Institute (WAI) has been awarded a three-year, $3.4 million grant from the Department of Labor (DOL) to develop apprenticeship programs in five communities to train people for skilled manufacturing jobs and careers.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker knew better than to run his gubernatorial campaign on a platform based on decimiating jobs in Wisconsin. But just one year into his term, he’s already become Job Killer in Chief, according to a new report by the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO.

A much-discussed report in the Sunday New York Times on why iPhones are made in China highlights the transition of Apple guru Steve Jobs who, a few years after Apple began building the Macintosh in 1983, bragged it was “a machine that is made in America.” Today, millions of Apple products like iPhones, iPads and Kindles are made in China sweatshops like Foxconn.

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address tonight made clear that he hears the people who aren’t being heard by the 1%, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Obama’s speech showed he “listened to the single mom working two jobs to get by, to the out-of-work construction worker, to the retired factory worker, to the student serving coffee to help pay for college.”

Cory McCray, an IBEW Local 24 member and founder of the Metro Baltimore Council AFL-CIO Young Trade Unionists, describes how his IBEW apprenticeship helped ensure he entered adulthood with a firm footing in the middle class. In the video here (on the left), McCray elaborates on his experience. 

As I anticipate my 29th birthday, I realize how one decade can drastically change a person’s life. I find it impossible not to give thanks to God for providing me with a family, community and, most of all, the Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 24, for placing direction in my path.

Nora Frederickson, AFL-CIO Media fellow, sends us this profile of a union member who gives back to his community in a big way.

Eric Howard, a painter from Hialea, Fla., knows what it’s like to dream of a better life. Growing up in inner city Miami in a working-class family, Howard worked odd jobs after school and learned from his family how to make do. He painted his first house as a teenager—but it wasn’t until his first painting class at Miami’s local Job Corps program that he decided to make his living as a union painter.