After more than four years of pressure from the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and other worker advocates, several of the largest tobacco companies, tobacco growers and workers are close to sitting down to discuss the issues of freedom of association without fear of retaliation, wages, housing, forced labor and other issues.

An estimated 65 million people in this country—or one in four adults—now have an arrest or conviction record that can show up on a routine criminal background check for employment. Today, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency that enforces federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination, voted 4-1 to approve updated guidelines on how employers may use criminal background checks on job applicants and current workers.

A Florida potato grower and its labor contractor have been accused of labor trafficking and taking advantage of workers, according to a federal lawsuit filed yesterday in Jacksonville by Florida Legal Services and Farmworker Justice. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida, on behalf of two farm workers who say they were victims of labor trafficking and other violations of federal and state labor laws while employed in 2009 and 2010 by Bulls-Hit Ranch & Farm, a potato grower in Hastings, Fla.

Congressional Republicans today failed in their latest attempt to roll back workers’ rights. The U.S. Senate defeated (45-54) a measure (S.J. Res. 36) to kill a new National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rule that makes modest changes in the procedures for workers who want to vote on whether to form a union.

The Olympic medals handed out at this summer's Olympic Games in London may be shiny and pretty on the outside but the inside story of the union-busting conglomerate that will manufacture the medals is ugly.

In a speech yesterday to the Illinois Chamber of Commerce in Springfield, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, saying he possessed the same type of “courage” as Lincoln did “to move the state forward.” Labor historian Larry Spivack says even today, Lincoln would take exception to the comparison.

History suggests the capital city’s most famous son might be tumbling in his tomb.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who is facing a recall election, quietly repealed a state law making it easier for pay discrimination victims to seek justice. Amanda Terkel reports in The Huffington Post that Walker signed into law a bill passed in party-line votes by Republicans in the state legislature that rolls back the 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act. The act had allowed workers to challenge pay discrimination in state rather than just federal courts.

The U.S. Department of Labor has added three products to the list of goods produced by forced labor, child labor or both. The list now includes 133 products from 71 countries, ranging from bamboo in Burma to zinc in Bolivia. Added to the list yesterday are bricks in Afghanistan and cassiterite and coltan in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Citing “repeated and well-documented violations of workers' rights” that the Honduran government has “utterly failed to address,” the AFL-CIO and the major Honduran trade unions are asking the U.S. government to act under the terms of the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA).

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) today introduced the Rebuild America Act. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the bill would "achieve shared prosperity by putting America back to work, rebuilding our infrastructure, repairing our safety net and insisting that shared sacrifice start at the top—with Wall Street and the wealthiest Americans."