The AFL-CIO and several individual unions, including the Machinists, the Steelworkers, Mine Workers and Food and Commercial Workers in recent days met with leadership of the new Colombian Labor Inspectorate and Department of Labor officials, to discuss how the inspectorate is working to promote and protect workers' rights in Colombia—and what it is doing to make sure workers who exercise their rights can do so without putting their lives on the line.

United Steelworkers (USW) members at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, Wash., have voted to accept the company’s latest contract offer. Shortly after USW members protested May 3 outside Tesoro’s shareholder meeting in San Antonio, the company presented a revised “last-and-final offer” that reportedly included some key concessions on workers’ benefits.

If you work in the hydraulic fracturing industry—better known as “fracking”—you may be exposed to high levels of crystalline silica, putting you at risk of developing silicosis, lung cancer and other debilitating diseases, according to a letter sent today from the AFL-CIO, Mine Workers (UMWA) and the United Steelworkers (USW) to the top federal safety agencies.

Leon Lynch, a former vice president of the United Steelworkers (USW) and the AFL-CIO Executive Council, died Friday in Memphis, Tenn. He was 76 years old.

Over the past few years, dozens of states have passed restrictive voter ID and other voter suppression laws that could disenfranchise an estimated 21 million eligible voters, mostly people of color, young voters and senior citizens. The United Steelworkers (USW) just posted three videos of people—including a former congressman—who have recently been denied the right to vote because of new state laws.

The biggest part of the working families’ political mobilization has always been “boots on the ground”—not ads on the airwaves. Yesterday’s primary victory in Pennsylvania for Rep. Mark Critz (D) shows just how much ground working families’ boots can cover.

The Olympic medals handed out at this summer's Olympic Games in London may be shiny and pretty on the outside but the inside story of the union-busting conglomerate that will manufacture the medals is ugly.

Members of several unions showed up in force at Whirlpool Corp.’s annual shareholder meeting in Chicago Tuesday. David Jones, a retired member of IUE-CWA, and a former Whirlpool employee of the shuttered refrigerator facility in Evansville, Ind., presented the AFL-CIO’s shareholder proposal asking the company to obtain shareholder approval for any future “golden coffin” payments to senior executives.

The just-launched Workers' Voice initiative will activate and energize networks of working families—union and nonunion, online and offline—around political campaigns, legislative issues and holding elected officials accountable to “build an independent voice for the working and middle class,” says AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Shuler.

Union and civil rights activists said they were “encouraged” today when German automaker Daimler—one of Alabama’s major employers with its Tuscaloosa County Mercedes-Benz plant—acknowledged it had engaged other businesses and state and federal lawmakers in discussions about Alabama’s draconian anti-immigrant law, H.B. 56.