Check out an excerpt of the AFL-CIO's new Innovators website feature, "No Depression: Pharmaceutical-Labor Alliance Flourishes."

“I certainly admit going in with an attitude of let’s-see-what-this-is-about,” Johnson & Johnson Vice President Donald Bohn says about cooperating with labor unions. “It turns out we have a lot more in common than you might think.”

And that’s why, about four years ago, Johnson & Johnson joined the Pharmaceutical Industry Labor-Management Association (PILMA), a growing coalition of pharmaceutical industry giants and the major building trades unions. Its goal is to foster good jobs in the domestic pharmaceutical industry while increasing access to affordable medicines.

The way President Obama and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) have set aside partisan politics to “work in singular and cooperative fashion to relieve the pain and suffering of those whose lives have been turned upside down” by Hurricane Sandy should be an example to elected officials everywhere, including members of Congress, says Sean McGarvey, president of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD).

President Obama and Governor Christie do not see the victims of this tragedy as 'Democrats' or 'Republicans,' they simply see them as 'Americans' who are in dire need of the assistance and generosity of our government and its people.

The Austin, Texas, worker center Workers Defense Project worker center (WDP) celebrates its 10th anniversary later this month of battling against wage theft, spotlighting the dangers and winning reforms of the Texas construction industry and standing up for workplace justice and immigrants’ rights.

An in-depth article in the current issue of The Austin Chronicle traces the history of the WDP worker center, from its 2003 inception as a one-person staffed operation, helping low-income, mostly immigrant Austin workers pursue wage theft claims, to its present day incarnation as an influential 1,000-member force and partner with the union movement in the championing of workers’ rights, especially in the construction industry, with an estimated 60% Latino workforce.    

This is an excerpt from "Community-Labor Partnerships 'TRADE-UP' to Create a Pipeline to Good Jobs in Atlanta," by Deborah Scott, executive director, STAND-UP; founder, TRADE-UP. 

The Atlanta/North Georgia Building Trades Council and STAND-UP, a nonprofit "Think and Act Tank for working communities" have partnered to create Trade-Up, a pre-apprenticeship program. Trade-Up addresses a critical gap in the regional labor force. Despite the fact that unemployment in Atlanta building trades remains mired in double digits, the aging construction workforce is leading to shortages of workers in specific trades. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that through the remainder of this decade, employment openings will come mainly from the replacement of retiring workers on existing jobs, not from new jobs created by economic growth. Skills linked to apprenticeships and other forms of on-the-job training are expected to be among the fastest-growing categories of employment. Apprenticeships are an efficient way to address the paradoxical imbalance between increasing market demand for specialized trade skills in an environment otherwise plagued by high unemployment and declining labor force participation.

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. 

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).

Cristina Tzintzun, executive director of the Workers Defense Project, and Michael Cunningham, executive director and secretary/treasurer of the Texas State Building and Construction Trades Council, send us this. 

Few construction labor leaders have ever thought of Texas as an easy place to organize. The state legislature is controlled by a super majority of Republicans that are sternly anti-immigrant and anti-worker. Construction business interests have a firm grip on the legislature. The biggest Republican donor in the state is Bob Perry, of Perry Homes, one of the largest home builders in Texas. That is why the efforts of unions and community groups to reform the construction industry in the state are so significant.

New members were elected to the AFL-CIO Executive Council this morning. Sean McGarvey, president of the Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), will fill the seat of former President Mark Ayers, and Laura Reyes, secretary-treasurer for AFSCME, will fill the seat of retiring AFSCME President Gerry McEntee. AFSCME President Lee Saunders was named chair of the Executive Council Political Committee.

A little more than a day before the nation’s highway and transit projects would lose funding—threatening nearly 2 million jobs—and student loan interest rates were set to double, Congress acted.

The House (373-52) and Senate (74-19) this afternoon passed the two-year, $120 million Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2012 that will protect more than 2 million jobs and expand a loan guarantee program that could create an additional 1 million jobs (mostly in the construction sector). The bill also keeps interest rates for college students on subsidized Stafford Loans at 3.4 percent. They were set to double on July 1 to 6.8 percent.

William Plotner waited for his daughter’s second birthday to enroll in the military on Sept. 11, 2004—three years after the World Trade Center twin towers fell. He wanted his daughter to remember the significance of her birth date. But most of all, he wanted her to think of him as a hero. Now Plotner, a U.S. Army veteran and member of the Laborers (LIUNA) Local 79, is rebuilding the World Trade Center.

Says Plotner:

On 9-11-04 I swore in. And now I get to work here. It brings, like, another sense of pride.