More than 200 academics and labor activists came together yesterday to discuss strategies for revitalizing the union movement.

Phil Neuenfeldt, Wisconsin State AFL-CIO president, sends an update on the actions around Wisconsin’s Walkerville.

Day six of the Walkerville tent city protest has seen overwhelming support from Wisconsin workers, students and community members. Over the course of the week, thousands of Wisconsinites have gathered on the cement blocks lining the Capitol Square in order to call attention to Gov. Walker and his legislative allies’ destructive budget proposals—proposals which will cripple Wisconsin’s schools, health care system and communities.

The Utility Workers (UWUA), along with the safe food advocacy group Food & Water Watch, this week filed a complaint with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), over the labor and environmental practices of United Water, a U.S. water utility and a subsidiary of French multinational Suez Environment.

You can usually find a good supply of canned and dry staples at community food pantries and banks. But fresh vegetables are sometimes hard to come by.  But later this year, food banks in the Monroe, Mich., area will see a harvest of fresh produce from a just-planted community garden.

There are 44 members of the United States Senate who don’t want consumer and working family advocate Elizabeth Warren to run the new federal agency designed to protect consumers and working families from the kind of Wall Street and Big Bank abuses last year’s landmark Wall Street reform legislation outlawed.

Colombia is still the deadliest country in the world for trade union members, according to the latest global Annual Survey of violation of trade union rights released yesterday by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

More than 100 House Democrats told House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) that his refusal to put possible revenue increases “on the table” during budget talks is not “an acceptable answer” and it puts at risk any chance of reaching a bipartisan solution. In a June 6 letter to Boehner they wrote:

Revenues must be a component of addressing our deficit and debt problems. Solving our fiscal problems with spending cuts alone would be devastating to our economy, to the middle class, and to vulnerable populations like seniors and low-income families.

Devon Whitman of the AFL-CIO Field Department reports on a huge victory for domestic workers at the International Labor Organization (ILO) meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.

Last night, following a week of intense negotiations, governments, employers and workers from across the globe reached agreement on the 19 articles which will make up the first international convention on domestic work at the 100th annual conference of the International Labor Organization (ILO). While the final vote of the ILO’s general body will take place on June 16, the victory last night marked a major achievement on the road to winning a strong international convention setting out the rights of domestic workers the world over.

A handful of states this year have introduced bills to raise their minimum wage. That’s generated the usual cries from business groups and the regular gang of lawmakers who fight darn near every piece of pro-worker legislation that comes along. 

Netroots Nation, the annual conference for online activists, is on next week, June 16-19, in Minneapolis. The union movement has a big presence there, as we seek to work more closely with our progressive allies in the netroots community. Here are some highlights:

• AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler is taking part in a June 17 lunch panel to talk about breaking down economic barriers that keep many Americans from moving ahead, especially young people, women and communities of color. She is joined by communications consultant Anat Shenker-Osorio and hip-hop artist Rha Goddess.