As thousands of engineers and technical workers at Boeing Co. plants in the Pacific Northwest took part in a “Day of Action,” negotiations between Boeing and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA)/IFPTE Local 2001 resumed Wednesday in Seattle and continue today. In the fall, the workers overwhelmingly (15,092 to 608) rejected an initial contract offer.

Stagehands in West Palm Beach, Fla., will secure regular work and share some $2.2 million in back pay after Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 500 and the Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts reached agreement on a five-year contract that settles charges in a dispute that began in 2001.

The agreement was reached in late December and approved today by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

More than 1,100 graduate student employees at New York University (NYU) and NYU-Poly have signed and delivered a letter to the university’s administration urging the school to respect their choice to join a union.

The letter was delivered in anticipation of a decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that could reverse a 2004 decision by the then Bush-administration-controlled NLRB holding that graduate teaching and research assistants at private universities were not employees protected by federal labor law.

The striking Palermo’s Pizza workers’ Truth Tour hits Seattle today where Palermo's workers and their allies are marching to Costco’s corporate headquarters in nearby Issaquah to urge Costco—the largest retailer of Palermo's products—to support the workers and stop selling the pizzas. Palermo's Pizza workers, who have been on strike since June 1, are demanding safe working conditions and recognition for their union.

A National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Administrative Law Judge ruled last week that the Boeing Co. violated federal labor law when it banned workers at its North Charleston, S.C., assembly plant from talking about joining a union on company time.  

Workers at the 787 Dreamliner plant have been meeting off-site with Machinists (IAM) representatives to talk about organizing for a voice on the job with the IAM. Administrative Law Judge William Nelson Cates ruled that if the company allows workers to discuss other nonwork-related issues while on the job, it cannot forbid them from discussing union issues.

The workers at Sensata Technologies, who’ve established the tent city “Bainport” across the street from the Bain Capital majority-owned plant that is shutting down and shipping the 170 U.S. jobs to China, filed unfair labor practice charges Wednesday against Sensata.

The workers charge that the company has threatened to shut down the plant before its end-of-the-year scheduled closure if the workers continue to organize to stop the outsourcing of their jobs to China.

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.

Now that the Republican National Convention—with its divisive policies, masked by a cynical call for unity—has wrapped up, let’s take a look at the deeply embedded anti-union and anti-worker philosophy in the Republican platform of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Daily Kos’ Laura Clawson says:

The basic message of the Republican platform on labor issues is this: Rights are there to be taken from workers and given to the 1 percent.

Workers at Palermo's Pizza in Milwaukee, Wis., have been on strike for nearly two months in a struggle for justice with one of the largest frozen pizza manufacturers in the nation. You can help the workers—like Laura Torres, a single mother of six who has worked at the Palermo's plant for 10 years—by asking Costco, Palermo’s biggest customer, to urge the pizza maker to respect workers and improve working conditions at the plant.

OMG, look up! Is that a flying pig? That was my thought when I read the latest bulletin from the Republican-controlled House Education and Workforce Committee announcing a hearing that would be “Examining Proposals to Strengthen the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).”