More than 1,800 University of Oregon faculty members won a voice at work after they chose to join United Academics, an affiliate of AFT Oregon and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).  The Oregon Employment Relations Board Friday certified the professors’ choice after the university dropped its objections.

“That was the turning point for a lot of actors," said actor Susan Sarandon to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka about the national commercial actors strike 12 years ago. "It wasn’t until we felt threatened that we realized the importance of our union.”

In a casual moment in a midtown Manhattan hotel Friday evening, Sarandon, a longtime member of SAG-AFTRA, and Trumka spoke at length before she introduced him to a gathering held by Local 1 of the American Federation of School Administrators.

A banner for Atlas Media Corp. fluttered in a light breeze above 36th Street in Manhattan. In this morning's sunlight on the sidewalk below, nearly 100 nonfiction TV writers and producers, members of the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), waved signs and chanted, demanding health care benefits and better treatment.

Then they staged a footrace, complete with numbered bibs and a finish line held on one end by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, that was dubbed a “Race to the Top” to end the “race to the bottom” at Atlas—a company named for the right-wing polemical novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

While many know of the AFL-CIO's community affiliate Working America as a high-level field operation that wins on issues and in elections, it has evolved into much more. Employing new tools and strategies, Working America is working with dozens of unions and progressive allies to strengthen ties between communities and local labor to build progressive infrastructure for the long haul. We’re in it to win it. Check out these examples.

Congressional Republicans—backed by their corporate sponsors—are trying to ram through a resolution that would kill a new fair union election rule approved last year by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Click here to send a message to your senators and urge them to vote “NO” on S.J. Res. 36 when it comes to a vote later this week.

Just in time for Easter, Pride at Work sends us this video to remind us it can be tough to organize at work, so you need to organize some bunnies to have your back. You might need to organize a lot of bunnies…and build an organization. There’s strength in numbers 

This is a cross-post from We Work Better Together, a project of the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

In an open letter published today in the New York Times, 11 leading German legal scholars and politicians called on Deutsche Telekom and other German companies to ensure that workers at German subsidiaries in the United States, particularly T-Mobile USA, are able to “exercise their unrestricted right to opt for organized representation in the company without fear. They must not be influenced, pressured, or intimidated by employers if they exercise their basic right for freedom of association. The human right of freedom of speech notably entails this right as well.”

This is a cross-post from the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) union

Kalamazoo, MI. – If you drive by a Panera Bread Café on any given morning, you will be treated with the decadent smell of freshly baking bread and sweet goods, thanks to the artful skills of Panera Bread bakers. These bakers work from 10 p.m. each night to 6 a.m. each morning making sure fresh bread, rolls, cakes and other baked goods are carefully molded and baked in time for the early morning Café opening. And if you were in Kalamazoo early [March 23], you may have heard the joyful screams of the Panera bakers celebrating their union victory after they voted by a two-to-one margin to be represented by the BCTGM.

Inequality in both wealth and income is greater than at any time since the early part of the last century. At the same time, says the AFL-CIO Executive Council, the best remedy to inequality and injustice—collective bargaining—is under increasing political attack in the private and public sectors. But workers across the country are fighting for their right to join a union.   

Here’s one for the good guys. David Warrick, executive director of AFSCME Council 62, reports that a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge has ruled that Louisville, Ky.’s Our Lady of Peace psychiatric hospital must reinstate former employee Amanda Doyle, who was fired, says Warrick, for trying to form a union at the hospital.