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.

Father Tony Shonis includes the  the local central labor council on his pastoral rounds wherever the church sends him. Says Shonis:

“I come from a union family. Both of my parents retired with a pension from the union. My father was in the Bakery and Confectionery [Tobacco] Workers [and Grain Millers] union and my mother was in the old ILGWU [International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, now UNITEHERE!]. From them, I learned what the union means to a working family and how civic minded union members are.”

Blaine Logan’s picture of a fellow Electrical Workers (IBEW) member clad in a fire retardant suit and face shield as he reaches into a tight spot to place a weld on a carbon steel refinery conduit was the runaway winner in the 2010 IBEW Photo of the Year contest.

When workers decide they want to come together and form unions, it’s a well-documented fact that management is none too happy about it.