When Bill Brockmiller, president of the Western Wisconsin AFL-CIO, was asked why he and several dozen union and community members and local officials in La Crosse were taking part in Workers Memorial Day ceremonies Sunday, he told WXOW-TV:

You have a right to go to work and earn your daily bread, support your family and come back home at night. So when that doesn't happen, when you lose your life in the pursuit of a paycheck, I think we owe it to those people, and to their family, those they leave behind, to honor that sacrifice.

With the federal minimum wage stuck at $7.25 an hour and an increase facing stiff opposition from congressional Republicans, coalitions  of union, community, faith and other groups are mobilizing to win increases in state and local minimum wage levels. Here’s a look at some recent wins and campaigns where AFL-CIO state federations and central labor councils are playing big roles.

It was no charming third time for former New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien (R) as the state House of Representatives decisively defeated (212-141) a "right to work" for less bill sponsored by O’Brien who no longer holds the speaker’s post.  

New Hampshire AFL-CIO President Mark MacKenzie called today’s vote “a strong rebuttal of ex-Speaker O'Brien's attacks on the middle class.” O’Brien championed the anti-worker measure in the past two sessions only to see it die both times.

Joshua Anijar, Florida AFL-CIO communications director, sends us this report on the recent Republican National Convention where working families greeted Mitt Romney and friends.  

When the Republican National Convention headed to Tampa, Fla., to nominate its candidate for president, the West Central Florida Federation of Labor (WCFFL) was ready. The 12-county organization staged “Welcome to Romney’s America,” a combination protest and satirical street theater to illustrate what America would be like under a Romney-Ryan administration.

New York State AFL-CIO (NYS AFL-CIO) President Mario Cilento was elected to a full four-year term by the delegates to the state federation’s convention in New York City this week. Cilento told the delegates that the state federation will mobilize the New York union movement’s 2.5 million members in the public sector, private sector and building trades. “We will educate and engage them year-round from Buffalo to Montauk and Plattsburgh to Brooklyn.”