Fast food workers at more than 60 restaurants in Detroit walked off the job Friday. This may be the largest fast food strike in American history, involving more than 400 workers from McDonald's, Long John Silver's, Burger King, Popeyes and KFC. Some locations were forced to shut down. At issue is workers' right to form a union and an increase in base pay to a minimum of $15 per hour.

This is a cross-post from Working America's Main Street blog. 

Lawmakers in Michigan are still pushing a bill that would keep cities and towns from making their own decisions about paid sick days laws. We call them “preemption bills”— restaurant lobbyists and their allies call it the “kill shot” to paid sick days.

More than 700 children and their families hunted for eggs and chatted with the Easter Bunny at the Monroe/Lenawee County AFL-CIO Central Labor Council and the United Way of Monroe County's sixth annual community Easter egg hunt at Munson Park last Saturday. 

Last year, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) pulled a classic political flip-flop when he proclaimed that "right to work" for less legislation wasn’t on his agenda. But late last year, he spearheaded the drive to ram the anti-work bill through a lame-duck legislative session that shut out the public.

This morning, as the law went into effect, nearly 100 Michigan union and community activists demonstrated outside the Detroit Athletic Club where Snyder was the main speaker at its annual "Pancakes & Politics” breakfast, in an action organized by the coalition We Are Michigan.

In rallies across the country, working families made their voices heard this week and let Congress know that they want comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship for the nation's 11 million aspiring Americans.

By a better than 2-to-1 margin, the teachers, counselors and social workers at César Chávez Academy, the largest charter school in Detroit, voted Thursday to join the Michigan Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (Michigan ACTS), an affiliate of AFT Michigan.

Chris Savage is a Michigan-based political writer and owner of Eclectablog. You also can follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

On Dec. 6, 2012, Republicans in the Michigan legislature passed bills that eventually led to Michigan becoming the 24th "right to work" for less state. With their majorities in both the House and the Senate and encouragement from Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, this was a pretty straightforward accomplishment. However, it was done with a crowd of thousands of protesters surrounding the Capitol building and filling its corridors. 

A coalition of Michigan labor unions—including the UAW—and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked a judge Thursday to strike down the recently passed "right to work" for less law because it was enacted while the public was locked out of the Capitol, which is a violation of the Open Meetings Act, the First Amendment and the Michigan Constitution.

We've heard a lot about loss of labor rights in Wisconsin, "right to work" for less legislation in Indiana and now Michigan. We get the impression that laws in those states had somehow required workers to join unions.

Quite the contrary. Unions are the bargaining agent for the employees, negotiating contracts with employers—binding legal contracts, sacred to conservative think tanks everywhere.

While government in Washington, D.C., remains divided and marked by long-term gridlock, governments in the states are much less divided. Of the 50 states, 37 now feature state governments where the governor and majorities in both legislative houses are controlled by one party—24 of those are controlled by Republicans. Extreme, anti-working family Republicans have repeatedly assaulted the rights of people in recent years and, by all accounts, the trend looks to expand in 2013. Working families are mobilized and fought back in 2012 and will continue to fight in 2013.  The response to the "right to work" for less push in Michigan was so strong, that governors in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have since declared that they won't push for right to work in their states.