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.

The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor is making creative use of modern technology to fight the anti-working families Prop. 32, a law that would prevent unions from using any money raised through payroll deduction on political causes. People who have iPhones or iPads can download an application that allows them to take a photograph of themselves and turn it into a representation of the effects of Prop. 32, if it were to pass—the silencing of people's political voices.

AFL-CIO Field Communications staffer Cathy Sherwin sends us this report.

In too many of our state legislatures, the start of the legislative session means the start of another round of attacks on workers. That’s been true throughout the Midwest and across the country, but the Missouri special session has the potential to be a major exception. There’s a great opportunity for elected officials, Democrats and Republicans alike, to make an investment in the kind of good jobs that are so hard to find right now.