Summer Olympic Games medal supplier, Rio Tinto—a union-busting global mining conglomerate with a track record of worker and environmental abuse—should be kept off the podium in London, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. In a letter sent to the chairman of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), Trumka points to Rio Tinto’s Jan. 1 lockout of 750 USW members in Alma, Quebec.

The Olympic medals handed out at this summer's Olympic Games in London may be shiny and pretty on the outside but the inside story of the union-busting conglomerate that will manufacture the medals is ugly.

Amy Masciola, a union campaign consultant, sends us this.

More than six months ago, American Crystal Sugar Co. locked out more than 1,300 sugar beet workers in the Red River Valley of Minnesota and North Dakota. Two months ago, Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. locked out more than 1,000 workers in Findlay, Ohio. Last week, Caterpillar announced it would shut down a plant in Ontario, just over one month after locking out 500 workers. Rio Tinto Alcan locked out 750 workers in Quebec Jan. 1. HealthBridge locked out 800 nursing home workers in Connecticut in December. As Laura Clawson at the Daily Kos notes, “For evidence of a war on workers, look no further than the rise of the lockout.”