Show your solidarity Super Bowl Sunday by not only cheering on your favorite NFL Players Association (NFLPA) members on the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens, but also buying union-made-in-America food and drinks for your party. Check out these union-made Super Bowl party products, compiled by our friends at Labor 411, the union business directory from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Food and drinks are brought to you by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM), the UAW, Machinists (IAM), Teamsters (IBT) and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).

This football season has become a disaster because of the greed of NFL management and team owners—who brought in more than $8.3 billion in revenue last year and who don't mind making a quick buck at the expense of NFL players’ safety, NFL fans and the integrity of America’s game, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in an e-mail to online activists. 

Since the botched call by a replacement referee cost the Green Bay Packers a win against the Seattle Seahawks Monday night, football fans all over the country are speaking out and demanding the NFL owners and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell end the referee lockout. (Read "Monday Night Football Disaster in Seattle Brings More Calls to End NFL Lockout of Refs.")

Sign the petition we’ve launched with our partner Daily Kos to NFL owners and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to demand they end the referee lockout.

If you were building a bridge, would you hire a work crew with a few hours of metal shop on their résumés, or trained and certified Ironworkers? Would you go into surgery with someone who only has a CPR certificate, or a real doctor with a medical degree?

If you’re NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, or one of the 32 NFL team owners, you'd go with the newbie—at least it seems that way, given their decision to lock out professional NFL officials and instead use untrained, unprepared and in-over-their-heads replacement referees.

Any fan of the NFL who has watched the season unfold with replacement officials because the league has locked out the skilled and veteran officials knows calls are being missed or called incorrectly and the replacements have a tenuous control of each game. But even worse, say the players, their safety is at stake.

In a letter to team owners urging an end to the lockout of the referees, the Executive Committee of the NFL Players Association writes:

Want to help your favorite NFL player and member of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) fight against school dropout rates in your community?

Pledge to become a reader, tutor or mentor, along with the 30 football players and the United Way initiative.

Pro football players and members of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) were busy during the 2012 offseason giving back to their communities. Carolina Panthers wide receiver Steve Smith pledged to donate $100,000 to help cover the medical bills of survivors of the Aurora, Colo., theater shooting; Kansas City Chiefs players helped rebuild homes devastated by the tornado in Joplin, Mo.; and Chicago Bears rookies planted trees at LaFollette Park. Read a full list of the community service work here. 

James Callahan, general president of the Operating Engineers (IUOE), and DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), were elected to the AFL-CIO Executive Council this morning at the council’s annual winter meeting in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

In a radio ad airing on Indianapolis-area stations during Super Bowl week, UNITEHERE! reminds listeners one of the first things many young NFL players do after signing a first contract is “buy their mom a house, or build her a new kitchen or let her retire.”

This just in from the Indiana State AFL-CIO:

Following the NFL Players Association statement on “right to work” Friday, six NFL players have sent letters to Indiana state representatives and senators denouncing the so-called “right to work” legislation.

The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) today urged the Indiana state legislature to reject a so-called right to work bill that the union says is a “political ploy designed to destroy basic workers’ rights. It’s not about jobs or rights.”