Members of the Reagan High School band stopped rush hour traffic yesterday in front of the federal building in Austin, Texas, along with hundreds of advocates, community leaders, families and construction workers, as they celebrated the Workers Defense Project’s (WDP's) biannual Day of the Fallen.

The nation’s broken immigration system is creating a crisis for workers and employers in the Texas construction industry. A new study by the Workers Defense Project (WDP) and the University of Texas finds that as many as half of the Lone Star State’s construction workers may be undocumented. Says WDP Executive Director Cristina Tzintzun:

Our immigration policies are broken. They’re not working for businesses, they’re not working for our workers and they’re not working for our state.

As we continue this week’s launch of the AFL-CIO’s new online hub @Work, today we are spotlighting “Collaboration,” one of the seven featured categories of the new site.

Unions and organizations that advocate for workers are teaming up to improve the conditions of all workers in Texas. The Workers Defense Project and the Texas State Building and Construction Trades Council have seen quite a bit of success in their collaboration on behalf of the working families of the Lone Star State.

Unlike other major cities where local construction workers share the benefits of a building boom and make up a large portion of the construction workforce, residents of the District of Columbia are grossly underrepresented on area construction sites where suburban residents hold a disproportionate share of the jobs, according to a new report.

Check out the AFL-CIO's new Innovators website feature, "Ironworkers Tap for Savings."

Steve Lehmann used to drive hundreds of miles each week shuttling around paperwork; now he flips back the cover of his iPad.

“Sometimes I’d drive an hour and 45 minutes from the office to the job site, then go back and forth with new blueprints,” Lehmann says. “That’s just a lot of time.”

Lehmann, an ironworker working as a project manager at Bennett Steel Inc. in Sapulpa, Okla., can access updated sets of blueprints or revised drawings on his tablet through a handful of apps—a big change in how paperwork is handled in the construction industry.

Frank Callahan, president of the Massachusetts Building Trades Council, sends us this open letter.

I am sure that many of you share my frustration at trying to sift through campaign commercials and talking points to find out where the candidates for president really stand on issues that are important to you. Part of the problem is Mitt Romney’s habit of changing his positions to suit his audience.

One thing he can’t change is his record. I had a front-row seat for Mitt Romney’s term as governor of Massachusetts. His positions and his actions on the issues that have a direct impact on building and construction trades workers were not good for our members.

This is a cross-post from Huffington Post's Spanish-language site Voces by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. 

Christian Hurtado’s story shows the potential of the new workers' rights movement. It's a story worth telling this month, days after we celebrated Labor Day and as we prepare to celebrate Latino Heritage Month.  

When his father Angel died in a work-related accident in 2004, Christian's life took an unexpected turn. Christian, 29, and his family don’t know the exact details of the accident, which happened while his father, an independent construction worker, was doing work inside a small warehouse in Austin, Texas. Christian’s family was devastated, especially his mom Victoria. 

Falls are the leading cause of death among construction workers and cause the second-highest number of injuries. A new interactive map marks fatal construction falls and graphically conveys what numbers alone cannot.

If you’re a football fan, tonight’s the night. The first game of the 2012 National Football League season—between the Super Bowl champion New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys—will kick off at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

There’s plenty of excitement about the football matchup (even with replacement workers subbing as referees), but the construction workers who built the stadium can feel an extra surge of pride in the work they completed two years ago under a project labor agreement (PLA).