More than 4,000 Georgia education workers who have been wrongfully denied unemployment insurance benefits since a 2011 ruling by the state’s labor commissioner will collect more than $8 million in back payments.

Dozens of Georgia union members urged their state lawmakers to block several anti-worker bills now before the state House and Senate in the Georgia AFL-CIO’s annual Lobby Day Thursday. At the same time, they celebrated the passage of a resolution that honors Hurricane Sandy relief workers from Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 84 and Georgia Power who traveled to New Jersey and elsewhere to help repair and recovery efforts.

After widespread reports of long lines and problems with voting on Election Day, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) announced that he will introduce legislation that will help address at least part of the problem. 

We all know unions have our backs on the job, but did you know they also have your bottoms and soles?

Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council Community Services Committee just completed a successful underwear drive where they netted 704 items (socks, belts, T-shirts, underwear and bras), which were delivered to Crossroads Community Ministries in Atlanta yesterday morning.

After reviewing unilateral changes Georgia made to its unemployment insurance (UI) rules, the U.S. Department of Labor has declared that the state has no “adequate statutory basis” for denying UI benefits to seasonal employees who work for private contractors providing services to schools. The strongly-worded guidance to Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler came in an Aug. 2 letter obtained by the Atlanta Constitution Journal and publicized in their front page story: State ordered to reverse itself on some unemployment claims.

An IHOP in Atlanta is sporting an "America Wants to Work" sign in its window. So is the auto-parts store and the bakery. Nearby, a cafe and Chinese eatery display the sign in their windows as well.

Through the efforts of Jimmy Hyde, who runs the UAW Global Institute, institute interns contacted area business owners who agreed to join in the nationwide union movement's campaign to Bring Jobs Home and put America's workers to work.

Relying upon a bogus interpretation of federal law and regulations, the state of Georgia has begun to deny seasonal workers the unemployment insurance (UI) benefits they have received for 16 years during their off seasons. Thousands of workers are affected—contract school bus drivers, bus monitors, longtime crossing guards, cafeteria cooks, janitors, landscapers and teachers in private religious schools. 

Good jobs should be as American as apple pie, but U.S. corporations have shipped some six million American jobs overseas in the past decade. Yesterday in Pittsburgh, some 200 union members told U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) that it’s time to “Bring Jobs Home.”

Hoping to talk to Sen. Toomey (R-PA) or his staff to urge support for the Bring Jobs Home Act (S. 2884), the activists from 19 unions and labor groups marched to Toomey’s home office. But even the offering of an All-American, union-made apple pie (courtesy of Food and Commercial Workers [UFCW] Local 23) couldn’t get the group in the door.

The Republican-controlled Georgia state legislature ended its session. In a victory for working families—and for the Bill of Rights—the anti-free speech bill (S.B. 469), that brought union, faith and tea party activists together to protest the proposal to subject picketers to big fines, died. But not before lawmakers, in a last-ditch attempt to pass the bill in some form, stripped the picketing provisions and turned S.B. 469 into a purely anti-union bill that would affect dues deduction for public employees. But the bipartisan coalition opposed to the S.B. 469 held firm, and lawmakers decided not to take up the bill.

But the victory was bittersweet. Republicans still managed to pass bills that cut jobless benefits severely and require some welfare applicants to pass drug tests.

The rally today at the Georgia state Capitol protesting extreme bills proposed by extremist state legislators went waaaay beyond bipartisanship.

The hundreds of ralliers, shouting, "We Own the Dome," represented a strange-bedfellows coming together of union activists, tea party members, faith activists and others, united against S.B. 469—the anti-free speech bill that would impose serious penalties for picketing a business or a CEO's home if it interferes with his or her "right of quiet enjoyment."