We've all seen the charts. As union membership rates go down, so goes the middle class and people's ability to bargain for living wages and a voice on the job. 

David Madland and Karla Walter from the Center for American Progress (CAP) say, in Top 6 Policies to Help the Middle Class that Won’t Cost Taxpayers a Penny, that strengthening people's ability to organize unions and to bargain collectively will go a long way in rebuilding the middle class. 

House Republican leadership rammed through a bill (H.R. 1120) earlier today that would effectively put the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) out of business. 

The NLRB enforces rules established under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which protects the rights of workers to form unions, bargain collectively and have a voice on the job. 

Talk about team work. House and Senate Republicans have come together with a unique new strategy to attack workers’ rights and shut down the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). And their corporate sponsors are loving it.

For a heart-breaking look at how the Republican-engineered dysfunction at the National Labor Relations Board is affecting working men and women, check out Dave Jamieson’s weekend piece in The Huffington Post.

Jamieson chronicles the nine-year ordeal of union coal miners at the Cannelton mine near Smithers, W.Va., who lost their jobs when Massey Energy (since purchased by another mining company after the notorious Upper Big Branch disaster) bought the mine.

The AFL-CIO supports the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and urges the Senate to support cloture and to vote for her confirmation. As President Obama's nominee for the appeals court, Halligan has an impressive record in public service. Halligan served as the solicitor general for the state of New York and as general counsel for the New York County District Attorney’s office. She has garnered broad support, ranging from law enforcement groups, appellate advocates and women’s bar associations.  

One group of workers at Boeing’s Pacific Northwest facilities voted to accept the company’s latest contract offer, while a second voted to reject the deal and to authorize a strike if necessary, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA)/IFPTE Local 2001 announced Tuesday.

A panel of Republican-appointed judges, including one who has, according to Think Progress, previously suggested that all business, labor and Wall Street regulation is constitutionally suspect, ruled that President Obama’s 2012 recess appointments of three members to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are invalid. Senate Republicans had been blocking confirmation votes on the three before the president's action.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called the ruling "shocking."

As thousands of engineers and technical workers at Boeing Co. plants in the Pacific Northwest took part in a “Day of Action,” negotiations between Boeing and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA)/IFPTE Local 2001 resumed Wednesday in Seattle and continue today. In the fall, the workers overwhelmingly (15,092 to 608) rejected an initial contract offer.

Stagehands in West Palm Beach, Fla., will secure regular work and share some $2.2 million in back pay after Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 500 and the Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts reached agreement on a five-year contract that settles charges in a dispute that began in 2001.

The agreement was reached in late December and approved today by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

More than 1,100 graduate student employees at New York University (NYU) and NYU-Poly have signed and delivered a letter to the university’s administration urging the school to respect their choice to join a union.

The letter was delivered in anticipation of a decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that could reverse a 2004 decision by the then Bush-administration-controlled NLRB holding that graduate teaching and research assistants at private universities were not employees protected by federal labor law.