This is a cross-post by Karen Hickey, communications director at the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO.

Working families in southwest Florida are standing in solidarity with Wisconsin workers and protesting Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) visit to Naples. Walker spoke this morning at the Ritz-Carlton resort in Naples, Fla., as part of the James Madison Institute think-tank luncheon.

AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this report.

Workers in New Hampshire took over the floor of the New Hampshire House chamber yesterday to testify against a spate of anti-collective bargaining bills debated in the House Labor Committee. The hearings were relocated to the people’s chamber after the hearing rooms were flooded past their capacity by more than 600 firefighters, state workers, truck drivers, teachers and community members protesting the most recent anti-worker onslaughts in the Granite State.

Michael J. Smith, AFL-CIO Community Services Liaison in Monroe, Mich., sends us this report.  

For the past 20 years, Monroe (Mich.) Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 326 has held an annual holiday dinner serving those in need in the city of Monroe.

Andrew Pantelis, a lieutenant with the Prince George’s County Fire and EMS Department in Landover, Md., says that taxing employer-provided health care benefits—a proposal before the so-called budget deficit “Super Committee”—would “hurt millions of working class Americans.”

With the fight in Ohio to defeat Issue 2 coming down to its final days, the Fire Fighters (IAFF) have launched ads featuring firefighters who are war veterans urging voters to vote “No on Issue 2.”  A “No” vote on Issue 2 would repeal S.B. 5, the law passed this spring that takes away the right of public employees to collectively bargain for a middle-class life.

In May, on the last day of Teacher Appreciation Week in Broward County, Fla., Cherine Akbari was honored “with a fancy embroidered jacket and handed a pink slip.”

Across the country, tens of thousands of firefighters, paramedics and teachers have been laid off and the jobs of tens of thousands more are under threat. As this nationwide ad from the Fire Fighters (IAFF) shows, those first responder cuts are threatening public safety.

Deborah Dion with the Ohio AFL-CIO field program sends us this.

Yesterday, Communications Workers (CWA) President Larry Cohen and Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga joined hundreds of union members from AFSCME, APWU, BCTGM, Bricklayers, CWA, FOP, IAFF, IBEW, OCSEA, OPBA, Plumbers & Pipefitters, SOAR, TWU, UFCW, USW, and Working America and community activists at a rally in Columbus to ask them to stand up to Gov. John Kasich’s anti-middle class agenda by getting their co-workers, families, and neighbors out to vote NO on Issue 2/Senate Bill 5.

This is a crosspost by Tony Burke from the Fire Fighters blog.

For 16 years, the IAFF Burn Foundation has brought young survivors together to form new bonds at its annual international Burn Camp.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka joined AFT President Randi Weingarten at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting yesterday to announce progress in the labor movement’s commitment to investing in infrastructure, clean energy retrofitting and job training.