A plan by the major mineral company, Great Salt Lake Minerals Corp., with ties to a Louisiana salt mine (North American Salt Co.), to expand its mineral extraction production at the Great Salt Lake, poses a threat to Utah’s Great Salt Lake ecosystem, says the United Steelworkers (USW).

North American Salt Co. also has a record of safety and health violations (enter Mine ID 1600358, to view to view violations) and unfair labor practices.  

Students at the 19 schools in Jefferson Parish, La., are getting more than 50,000 new books and, best of all, those books are free. Last week, the Jefferson Federation of Teachers (an AFT affiliate), union and community volunteers began sorting the 2,000 boxes of books that will be distributed during the next month. The book distribution is part of a nationwide joint project between AFT and First Book, a nonprofit organization that distributes books to children from low-income families

AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow Luis Santoyo sends us this report from the battleground state of Virginia. 

Since June, workers with United Steelworkers (USW) Local 8888 have diligently passed out election-related fliers to their co-workers outside the Newport News Shipbuilding shipyard in southeastern Virginia.

True to their commitment to get worker-friendly candidates elected on Nov. 6, Local 8888 members stood outside the shipyard early Saturday ready to greet and encourage their fellow co-workers to vote for former Gov. Tim Kaine and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) who, respectively, are running for the U.S. Senate and Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District. Both candidates joined the shipyard workers early Saturday morning.

This new video from the United Steelworkers (USW) exposes how Mitt Romney and Bain Capital are profiting by selling out America's workers and shipping U.S. jobs to China.

In 2010, the Bain Capital-controlled Sensata Technologies bought Honeywell’s automotive onboard sensor business, including a Freeport, Ill., plant, where 170 workers were making a middle-class living. Says Tom Gaulrapp:

They came in and introduced the transition team, and the next bullet in the meeting was, “By the way, by the end of 2012 all the jobs in this plant will be moved to China.” 

Trade unions and the 175 million workers with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) joined together Oct. 7 and called for decent jobs and respect for workers' rights on the annual World Day for Decent Work. This year, the AFL-CIO honored the day by standing in solidarity with Hyatt hotel workers and workers at the Mexican operations of the Finnish auto parts manufacturer PKC. 

Letters from AFL-CIO unions to workers mobilizing to win respect and a union voice on the job at Hyatt and PKC pledged their solidarity and support. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the letters from the unions:

will tell the workers that we support their rights to organize and bargain—the only road forward for fairness and decent work...

A group of adjunct faculty members at Duquesne University voted by a better than 5-to-1 margin to form a union affiliated with the United Steelworkers (USW). The ballots were cast in July, but not counted until late September while the school appealed the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision to allow the election. The appeal was rejected.

When the American automobile industry was on the verge of collapse in 2009, Mitt Romney said he’d let it go bankrupt. President Obama engineered a recovery program that put this vital industry back on its feet and saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, not just at the auto plants, but up and down the supply chain and throughout American manufacturing. This new video from the United Steelworkers (USW) tells that story through the eyes of the men and women of USW Local 903 at the Gary, Ind., Dana Holding Corp. axle plant. 

Watch USW's new video and share it on Facebook, Twitter and all your social networks. 

When Travis Turner was 12 months old, he was so sick he almost died. Just three months into his treatment for hepatoblastoma, a rare form of liver cancer, his family's health insurance company kicked him off because the cost of his care had reached $1 million. Since then, Turner, whose father Craig is a member of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7248, was covered by Medicaid while his parents continued to fight for health insurance coverage. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, which Mitt Romney plans to repeal if elected president, 7-year-old Travis is now able to get back on his father's health insurance. Watch the USW YouTube video—Affordable Care Act: Hope Delivered for USW Families. 

True Value should take back the 2011 Supplier of the Year Award it gave North American Salt, says United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard, because North American operates a salt mine in Louisiana that has received safety and health citations for serious violations and been shut down temporarily by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Some 100 workers at the company’s Cote Blanche mine in Louisiana are USW members.

This is a cross-post from United Steelworkers (USW). 

Workers in a northeast Maryland Siemens’ plant, who recently signed affiliation cards with the USW, have become targets of the company’s anti-union philosophy, said USW last week. The company has launched a full-blown union-busting campaign, hiring an anti-union consultant, Ken Cannon, who advertises “40 years of experience supporting managements' efforts to remain union free.”