John Padget, AFL-CIO Community Services liaison with the Black Hawk Union Council, sends us this report.

The Black Hawk County UAW Local 838 Community Services Committee in Waterloo, Iowa, knows how important it is to be prepared when nature strikes in the Midwest. In June, Lee Bedore, Bryan Cue and I put on a class for UAW members in CERT (Community Emergency Response Team).

Robert Cebina, president of UAW Local 723 in Monroe, Mich., sends us this on the local’s recent fundraising effort.

We recently raised $2,300 during a fundraiser to buy phone cards for U.S. troops overseas. We held the fundraising event, which included a silent auction raffle for donated items and a 50/50 raffle, at the UAW Local 723 Union Hall in Monroe, Mich.

We’re looking forward to the release later this year of the documentary “Brothers On The Line,” which chronicles the lives of UAW leader Walter Reuther and his brothers, Roy and Victor—from the Great Depression to the Great Society.

This is a crosspost from the Detroit News by UAW President Bob King.

If there is one thing that UAW members and leaders have had to understand and deal with it is the concept of being  competitive in the global economic marketplace in which we all now operate.

AFL-CIO Community Services Director Will Fischer describes union volunteer efforts in Kenosha, Wis., to collect clothes for those in need.

United Way of Kenosha County (Wis.) recently wrapped up its “Bare Necessities Drive”  which included participation of 20 area businesses and unions that aided 13 nonprofit care agencies in the community.

Research and teaching assistants at New York University (NYU)  last week moved one step closer  to regaining their rights under federal law to form a union and bargain for improvements at work.

You can usually find a good supply of canned and dry staples at community food pantries and banks. But fresh vegetables are sometimes hard to come by.  But later this year, food banks in the Monroe, Mich., area will see a harvest of fresh produce from a just-planted community garden.

Today, six years ahead of schedule, Chrysler Corp. repaid the last of its $8.5 billion in loans the Obama administration made to the troubled carmaker in April 2009 to help keep Chrysler afloat and save the jobs of tens of thousands of Chrysler workers and workers in the supply chain.

Members of the UAW Puerto Rico public sector Locals 2396 and 2373, Puerto Rico’s Servidores Públicos Unidos (SPU)/AFSCME Council 95 and other public employees celebrated May 17 when Gov. Luis Fortuño signed into law a bill (Law 73) reinstating collective bargaining for public employees.

Even as millions of U.S. workers can’t find a job and corporate profits are through the roof, House Speaker John Boehner has proposed a change in the tax system that will shrink the job pool even more. Boehner’s suggestion to exempt U.S corporations from paying taxes on offshore profits would give companies even more incentive to move jobs overseas, according to a new report.