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.”

AFL-CIO unions reacting to presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s selection of Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul “End Medicare as We Know It” Ryan as his running mate say the Romney-Ryan ticket is the wrong choice for America.

Yesterday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said, "Whether it's outsourcing American jobs or picking his running mate, Mitt Romney's proven just how bad his decision making is for working people. Aligning himself with the poster-child for ending Medicare and Social Security puts to rest any suggestion that Romney has a clue what the middle class needs. We're witnessing the radical Tea Party extremes drive the final nail in what was once the Republican Party."

Here’s what unions had to say:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) cut straight to the chase Friday at a Bring Jobs Home roundtable in Charleston.

We now give tax incentives for people who move jobs offshore. That's just about the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Unless the nation’s campaign laws that allow corporations and the wealthy unlimited—and, many times, anonymous—campaign contributions are changed, “we will lose the right to collectively bargain,” within the next 10 years, says United Steelworkers (USW) Present Leo W. Gerard.

Speaking to a group of USW members in Homestead, Pa., over the weekend, Gerard warned that without a massive turnout of union voters this fall, the unprecedented flood of campaign cash to candidates and barely concealed extremist front groups could swing the election to candidates dedicated to destroying the union movement.

The AFL-CIO,  United Steelworkers (USW) and UAW represented the U.S. labor movement at the national convention of the CUT, Brazil’s leading labor federation. CUT unions are partners in the Workers Party (PT) that has governed Brazil since 2003 during the presidencies of metalworker and union leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) and the current president, Dilma Rousseff.