Warehouse workers, school bus drivers, teachers, mechanics, telecommunication and manufacturing workers all have recently won a voice at work with AFL-CIO unions.

AFT and West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin announced they are leading an unprecedented public-private partnership to improve educational opportunity and address complex social and economic problems in the Central Appalachia community of McDowell County, W.Va.

At a White House event today featuring President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, AFT President Randi Weingarten represented labor leaders in joining university presidents and corporate executives in support of the presidential Better Buildings Challenge initiative.

Around the world, some 215 million children—nearly one in seven—go to jobs or labor at home rather than attend school. American history, too, is rife with the stories of children made to work in factories and mines.

More from Alabama, where a delegation of African American labor and civil rights leaders is  investigating the state’s recently passed anti-immigrant law. Follow the delegation here.

A grade school child is there one day and gone the next. Dependable laborers don’t show up to pick crops on a farm.

Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs sends us this from Alabama, where she will report on the delegation of African American labor and civil rights leaders as they investigate Alabama’s recently passed anti-immigrant law. Follow the delegation here.

With the passage of H.B. 56, Alabama has taken a huge step backward, into the 1950s. Today, an African American delegation of labor and civil rights leaders traveled to Birmingham, Ala., to help shed a light on what is seen as one of the harshest immigration laws in the country and how it invokes inhumanity reminiscent of the Jim Crow South.

The labor movement, the union-owned financial services company Ullico and the state of Oregon are partnering in a $15 million “Cool Schools” initiative that includes repairs, rebuilding and energy retrofits. Says AFT President Randi Weingarten:

AFL-CIO Field Communications Coordinator Andrew Richards files this report on the fight in Ohio to defeat Issue 2.

From small towns like Portsmouth on the banks of the Ohio River in the south to big cities like Cleveland bordering Lake Michigan in the north and all around the Buckeye State, union members are hitting the doors and the phone banks to make sure working families cast a “No” vote on Issue 2 Nov. 8.

Some 750 United Steelworkers (USW) members ratified a new contract, ending an 11-month lockout, and more news from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 1,400 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.

AFL-CIO Field Communications Coordinator Andrew Richards sends us the latest from Ohio.

Thousands of Ohio working families went door to door canvassing across the state over the weekend to get out the vote against Issue 2/S.B. 5. With a little more than two weeks left until Election Day, Nov. 8, Ohioans are working furiously to talk with as many Ohioans about how Issue 2/S.B. 5 is unsafe, unfair and has hurt our communities because it takes away the ability of public employees to collectively bargain for a middle-class life.