As we near the conclusion of this week’s launch of @Work, today we are spotlighting “Innovation,” one of the seven featured categories of the new AFL-CIO site.

Ask Los Angeles Times reporter Alana Semuels why union membership in California rose by 100,000 in 2012, and she’ll give you a simple answer:

“Latino workers.”

To explain the contrast between the trend in California and the United States as a whole—where union membership dropped last year by 400,000—Semuels turned to some credible sources, including Steve Smith of the state labor federation who cited “an appetite among these low-wage workers to try to get a collective voice to give themselves opportunity and a middle-class lifestyle.”

Christian Torres worked as a cook in the Pomona College dining hall for more than six years. Torres and 16 of his co-workers were fired from Pomona College for not re-verifying their work eligibility after the college asked for documents, which were requested while he was leading an effort to organize to form a union. Torres and his brother came to the United States while still teenagers to join their mother and father who were already in the U.S. He supports the movement to create a common-sense immigration process. Although Torres was fired from Pomona, he continues to support his co-workers in their struggle for better working conditions at the college. 

After years of organizing, Los Angeles carwash workers successfully negotiated contracts with three carwashes and gained workplace rights most workers should be able to take for granted: sick leave, access to health care, workplace safety, lunch breaks, living wages and respect. The carwash workers were successful, in large part, through the strength of community-labor partnerships.

In this video, Miguel, a carwash worker of 18 years, sees the power of community-labor partnerships in his experience organizing for workplace rights.

Check out the AFL-CIO's new Innovators website feature "Cleaning Up: The Power of Community-Labor Partnerships."

Office clerical workers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, members of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 63, are striking in order to protect jobs in America that pay well and help drive the economy. Employers walked out of negotiations Saturday, prompting International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) Acting General Secretary Stephen Cotton to condemn the international carriers and terminal operators.

Ann Hernandez gets up at 4:30 a.m. every day to deliver the Los Angeles Times newspaper to Martin Sheen's neighborhood...and he thinks that’s pretty cool. Hernandez works 365 days a year—even Christmas. Check out Sheen’s thank you video and visit www.aflcio.org/ThankYou to upload your own video or send an e-card, thanking someone whose work you appreciate.

This is a cross-post by Labor Lou. 

A neighborhood on the eastern edge of the L.A. basin and shorthand for the movie and television industries, Hollywood had its own city charter for fewer than 10 years before being annexed by Los Angeles in 1910. By joining L.A., it gained access to the water supply then beginning to flow by aqueduct from the Owens Valley, 233 miles to the north.

D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille and Charlie Chaplin filmed there but now, in fact, studios and related businesses are situated throughout the Los Angeles metropolitan area, with particular concentrations in Culver City, Burbank, the San Fernando Valley and—of course—the part of town known as Hollywood.

A question Cuahuctemoc Salinas often gets when he tells carwash customers about the poor working conditions carwash workers experience is “So why are they still working here?”

To which he replies:

They’re afraid. Jobs are sacred right now. They have to provide for their families.

Los Angeles carwash workers are getting health care—all because of a dynamic partnership between the United Steelworkers and members of the local community who have joined forces to help carwasheros gain a voice on the job.

Click here to see a video clip that highlights how this partnership improves the lives of workers.

As carwash worker Oscar says: "Now, thank God my life has changed. If I get sick and feel bad, I have a clinic to go to. This is all because of the campaign."

Some 1,200 workers at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport (LAX) hotel will share a $2.5 million settlement to a class-action suit that alleged the hotel withheld wages, failed to pay overtime and failed to provide meal and rest breaks to workers from 2004 to 2011. Hilton agreed to settle the suit filed in 2008. Juan Banales, a Hilton LAX cook of nearly 20 years, says:

For years, I was unable to take breaks. The law says you have the right to take breaks. It's a shame we had to file a lawsuit to get the hotel to understand that.