AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sent this message to working family activists:

Tom Ward’s hardest memory to live with was the day his father came home from what would be his last day of work. His father barely made it through the door, fell to the floor and, between tears, said, “I can’t do it anymore.”

Today, Union Sportsmen’s Alliance (USA) and a team of union volunteers are holding Take Kids Fishing Day events in Wisconsin and Ohio as part of National Fishing and Boating Week. A third Take Kids Fishing day event will be held later this summer in Las Vegas. The Wisconsin event, at Pettibone Lagoon in Lacrosse, is open to the public and is sponsored by the Western Wisconsin AFL-CIO. At Walter C. Best Wildlife Preserve in Munson, Ohio, the Bricklayers (BAC) Ohio District Council and BAC Local 16 will host children with varying physical and mental disabilities.

Today in a Senate hearing room usually filled with sharp-suited lobbyists and other Capitol Hill insiders, more than two dozen family survivors of workers killed on the job took the front row seats. They stood and faced the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and held photographs for lawmakers to see--images of their fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, sons and daughters.

Tributes continue to come in for Mark Ayers, president of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), who died unexpectedly April 8 at age 63. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka calls Ayers an “extraordinary leader and friend.”

On next week’s episode (March 15) of “Brotherhood Outdoors," Bob Krien, a member of Bricklayers (BAC) Local 4 in Wisconsin, heads to southwest Montana to hunt mule deer with the show’s host, Tom Ackerman.

More than 30 young people with varying physical and intellectual disabilities had the opportunity to take part in Ohio’s Youth Deer Gun Season earlier this month, thanks to the Union Sportsmen’s Alliance’s (USA) Boots on the Ground program and 50 volunteers from Bricklayers (BAC) locals 7 and 39 in southeastern Ohio.

AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this report.

As the congressional Super Committee’s deadline for a federal deficit reduction plan nears, more than 2,600 teachers, ironworkers, construction workers, nurses and others took to the streets in Massachusetts in recent days with a single message: no cuts.

Deborah Dion with the Ohio AFL-CIO field program sends us this.

Yesterday, Communications Workers (CWA) President Larry Cohen and Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga joined hundreds of union members from AFSCME, APWU, BCTGM, Bricklayers, CWA, FOP, IAFF, IBEW, OCSEA, OPBA, Plumbers & Pipefitters, SOAR, TWU, UFCW, USW, and Working America and community activists at a rally in Columbus to ask them to stand up to Gov. John Kasich’s anti-middle class agenda by getting their co-workers, families, and neighbors out to vote NO on Issue 2/Senate Bill 5.

AFL-CIO Community Services Director Will Fischer describes union volunteer efforts to stretch the limited dollars of Sacramento area nonprofit organizations.

Every year local nonprofit agencies spend thousands of dollars on toilet paper for families in need. That’s money they could be spending on much-needed services that benefit the community. Since 2009, the Sacramento Central Labor Council and the local United Way have partnered to create Toilet Paper Drives to help local nonprofit partners offset costs and redirect the money saved into vital programs.

AFL-CIO Community Services Director Will Fischer profiles the work of Building Trades union members in Sacramento repairing and rehabbing homes for seniors and low-income families.

The Sacramento Sierra’s Building and Construction Trades Council frequently fields requests for volunteer work. Recently, working with Rebuilding Together, an organization that rehabs houses for seniors and low-income homeowners, they took their skills to Del Paso Heights.