The Greater Green Bay (Wis.) Labor Council participates in two community service drives each year. Volunteers like Plumbers and Pipe Fitters (UA) members Len Boknevitz and Glen Fay (pictured, left to right) will engage in about 260 to 280 hours of bell-ringing for the Salvation Army as part of the "Bells of Organized Labor" event.

Working people across the United States in more than 100 events last night called on their representatives to reject benefit cuts for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and to stop tax giveaways for the richest 2%. 

View photos from events around the country on the AFL-CIO Facebook page. 

As the mercury began to dip earlier this fall and furnaces cranked up in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, a near tragedy drove home the importance of the community service partnership between Plumbers and Pipefitters (UA) Locals 539 and 455 and the Minnesota Mechanical Contractors Association.

Students at the 19 schools in Jefferson Parish, La., are getting more than 50,000 new books and, best of all, those books are free. Last week, the Jefferson Federation of Teachers (an AFT affiliate), union and community volunteers began sorting the 2,000 boxes of books that will be distributed during the next month. The book distribution is part of a nationwide joint project between AFT and First Book, a nonprofit organization that distributes books to children from low-income families

On Labor Day, you can duck inside for a little bit of outdoor fun for the second annual "Brotherhood Outdoors" Labor Day marathon on the Sportsman Channel. The eight-episode marathon kicks off at 1 p.m. EDT and runs through 5 p.m. The Labor Day marathon concludes with a new episode that features Rene Thorn, a Huntington Beach, Calif., refrigeration fitter from Plumbers and Pipe Fitters (UA) Local 250.

President Obama had a question for the delegates to the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department’s (BCTD) annual legislative conference in Washington, D.C.

What’s a better way to make our economy stronger?  Giving another tax break to every millionaire and billionaire in the country?  Or building the roads and bridges and broadband networks that will help our businesses sell more goods around the world?

Cruise on over to our AFL-CIO home page for two new features that spotlight an innovative training program from Chicago Plumbers and Pipe Fitters Local 597 (UA) and a look at the creative campaign music video dancers are waging for a fair contract.

Plumbers and Steamfitters (UA) Local 184 and West Kentucky Community and Technical College (WKCTC) earned national recognition for partnering to provide a unique "going green" training program for the union's apprentices and journeymen. The Paducah, Ky., union and school plan to follow up with a two-year college degree program for Local 184 members.

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 sends us this report:

Members of the Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 412 Plumbers and P ipefitters (UA) Local 412 held their 20th annual Heat’s On program in September. As a service provided free of charge to low-income seniors, Heat’s On volunteers service furnaces, winterize swamp coolers, install smoke alarms and change out batteries. This is a joint project among UA Local 412, Mechanical Contractors Association-New Mexico, United Way of Central New Mexico and the City of Albuquerque’s Office of Senior Affairs.