In May, on the last day of Teacher Appreciation Week in Broward County, Fla., Cherine Akbari was honored “with a fancy embroidered jacket and handed a pink slip.”

UAW members in Wisconsin ratify a new contract with Oshkosh Corp., 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 on efforts to get-out-the-vote to repeal a bill killing collective bargaining rights in Ohio.

There are only 24 days to go until Election Day, Nov. 8, but Ohio’s working families aren’t slowing down. On Saturday, nearly 1,000 union members and community activists across the state participated in walks and phone banks to talk with working families and urge them to vote “NO” on Issue 2 to repeal S.B. 5 on Election Day or through early voting. S.B. 5, which guts the collective bargaining rights of public employees, was pushed through last spring by Republican Gov. John Kasich and the Republican-controlled legislature.

Deborah Dion with the Ohio AFL-CIO field program sends us this.

Yesterday, Communications Workers (CWA) President Larry Cohen and Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga joined hundreds of union members from AFSCME, APWU, BCTGM, Bricklayers, CWA, FOP, IAFF, IBEW, OCSEA, OPBA, Plumbers & Pipefitters, SOAR, TWU, UFCW, USW, and Working America and community activists at a rally in Columbus to ask them to stand up to Gov. John Kasich’s anti-middle class agenda by getting their co-workers, families, and neighbors out to vote NO on Issue 2/Senate Bill 5.

Jennifer Angarita in AFL-CIO Field Mobilization sends us this report.

From marches to teach-ins, activists across the country have mobilized around the DREAM Act, a common-sense immigration bill for students who were brought to the United States at a young age and who serve in the military or attend college for at least two years. Many have even risked deportation and detention to raise awareness of their cause. Matias Ramos is a prominent DREAM leader and UCLA graduate who was detained last year by ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) while traveling.

Casey Karns hopes young workers will come to the Next Up Young Workers Summit, which begins next week, ready to take a bigger and stronger role in the union movement. Because if they don’t, she says, Big Business and the far right will win the battle for the future of America.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka joined AFT President Randi Weingarten at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting yesterday to announce progress in the labor movement’s commitment to investing in infrastructure, clean energy retrofitting and job training.

In the past year, congressional Republicans and right-wing extremists have ramped up their long-standing campaign against federal workers, claiming their pay is too high and their benefits too generous compared to private-sector workers. A new study shows how wrong they are.

Nicole Fuller, AFL-CIO Community Services liaison for the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania/Philadelphia Council (UWSEPA), reports on the effort to provide book bags for children in need.  

Five years ago, AFL-CIO Community Services liaison Janet Hammond Ryder, who is retiring this year, spearheaded a partnership with the UWSEPA, unions, local businesses and grassroots community leaders to raise money, collect school supplies and pack them in book bags and distribute them to children living in shelters in Philadelphia and three surrounding counties. Her vision dubbed “Stuff the Bus” is now being duplicated in sister United Way agencies.

The nation’s ailing economy needs a prescription powerful enough to heal the jobs crisis and America’s working families need an independent political voice that’s not beholden to parties or politicians, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.