AFL-CIO Community Services Director Will Fischer sends us this report from New Orleans.

In the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Southeast Louisiana Building and Construction Trades Council and the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO have regularly pitched in to repair and rebuild the community.

This is a cross-post from the Electrical Workers (IBEW).

While national weather reports have focused on major flooding and violent storms in the Midwest, a series of damaging tornadoes swept across western Massachusetts on June 1.

AFL-CIO Community Services Director Will Fischer reports on the flood relief efforts unions are mounting in Montana.

Montana has been hit hard by a series of recent severe storms coupled with runoff from mountain snow melt. The combination has caused serious flooding across the state. Forty-eight of the state’s 56 counties have declared flood emergencies and federal disaster declarations have been issued for 31 counties, plus four American Indian reservations.

Tom Dalzell is business manager and financial secretary of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 1245, which represents electrical workers in the state of Nevada (excluding Las Vegas) and Northern California. He describes how online organizing complements traditional organizing—and why both need to work together.

When I started with the United Farm Workers of America in 1972, some of the old hands taught me a trick: Before you organize people, you have to meet them. To meet them, you have to know where they are. Back then, that meant fields, parking lots where crews gather in the morning, their homes  and the occasional bar. Now, with more than 500 million people on social networks like Facebook, that means going online.

In this new video from the Electrical Workers (IBEW), attorneys at the New Jersey Attorney General’s office tell why they came together to and joined the IBEW.

AFL-CIO Community Services Director Will Fischer profiles the work of Building Trades union members in Sacramento repairing and rehabbing homes for seniors and low-income families.

The Sacramento Sierra’s Building and Construction Trades Council frequently fields requests for volunteer work. Recently, working with Rebuilding Together, an organization that rehabs houses for seniors and low-income homeowners, they took their skills to Del Paso Heights.

Max is in deep trouble. His bosses have seen him meeting with “union types” and they want a word with him. Privately. Behind closed doors. Now!

AFL-CIO Community Services Director Will Fischer sends us this report on Green Bay, Wis., union volunteers helping make life more accessible for an injured war veteran.

Green Bay union volunteers are working  alongside community groups, Heroes at Home and Rebuilding Together of Greater Green Bay, to build a new home for retired Army Staff Sergeant Forrest Perez.

Terry Davis, the AFL-CIO Community Service liaison from the Central Alabama Labor Federation in Birmingham, sends us this update on how unions are continuing their outreach to help the victims last month’s series of deadly tornadoes.

The 75 workers at Comcast in Fairfield, N.J., made history again last night by becoming the first Comcast worksite in the country to ratify a first contract. Last year, the workers were the first Comcast employees to form a union, voting for Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 827.