Hugh J. Campbell, son of a steelworker, sends us this:

The following is a response to President Obama Challenging CEOs to Hire the Jobless (see message after the jump).

On Wednesday, April 24, the AFL-CIO and MomsRising will be hosting a Twitter chat at 2 p.m. ET about earned paid sick leave. Follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #WellnessWed. 

Oscar came to the United States at the age of 16 to work. There were no jobs for him in his native Guatemala, and he felt obligated to help support his parents.

He was lured across borders by the promise of work. He believed, as so many immigrants do, that there would be a job for him in America.

For the past five years, he has worked at a Los Angeles carwash that cheated him and other immigrant workers out of pay, refused protective gear and even denied drinking water.

It’s National Pizza Week (Jan. 9- Jan. 16) and we’re inviting pizza lovers everywhere to celebrate in solidarity with the striking workers at the Palermo’s Pizza factory in Wisconsin. Striking since last summer, these workers are remaining strong in their plea to management for the recognition of their union and the reinstatement of those who were wrongfully terminated.

This is a cross-post from United Steelworkers (USW). 

Workers in a northeast Maryland Siemens’ plant, who recently signed affiliation cards with the USW, have become targets of the company’s anti-union philosophy, said USW last week. The company has launched a full-blown union-busting campaign, hiring an anti-union consultant, Ken Cannon, who advertises “40 years of experience supporting managements' efforts to remain union free.”

This is a crosspost from Common Dreams by Michelle Chen, a contributing editor at In These Times and other publications. The following is an excerpt from a longer essay, "What Labor Looks Like: From Wisconsin to Cairo, Youth Hold a Mirror to History of Workers' Struggles," written for the new book, Labor Rising: The Past and Future of Working People in America (The New Press), edited by Daniel Katz and Richard A. Greenwald.

Every revolution needs two essential ingredients: Young people, who are willing to dream, and poor people, who have nothing to lose. Yet the social forces that make movements strong also incline them toward self-destruction. Hence, over the past few decades, uneasy intergenerational alliances have melted away as impatient young radicals bridle against the old guard of incumbent left movements. At the same time, when it comes to organizing, without patronizing, poor folks, activists continually struggle just to find the right language to talk about systemic poverty in a sanitized political arena that has largely been wrung dry of real class consciousness.