The Texas AFL-CIO and Texas AFT partnered this weekend with a Univision station in Houston to promote reading, immigration reform and workers' rights at the Houston edition of the COPA Univision amateur soccer tournament. The event included adult men's and women's and youth teams. During the tournament, several thousand people visited the AFL-CIO/AFT exhibit and volunteers gave out more than 1,800 books to children in attendance. Besides the ice cream truck, the exhibit was the second most popular, said Joe Arabie of the Texas AFL-CIO. 

Does your boss switch your schedule at the last minute without warning? Not ask for your input? Working America, AFL-CIO's community affiliate, launched an interactive web tool for workers who don't have union representation to help them with job-related problems and guidance and solutions for dealing with those concerns. The site, Fix My Job, is part of a collaboration with AFL-CIO's Organizing Department and includes resources from organizers, workplace experts and specialists, as well as more advanced step-by-step instruction, tasks and tactics.

The Letter Carriers' (NALC) annual food drive collected 74.3 million pounds of food and was the second most successful in the program's 21 years. The food was used to restock food banks, pantries and shelters around the country. The total was an increase of 5% over last year and was the highest in a decade.

Will Fischer, community services coordinator at the AFL-CIO, sends us this update from Oklahoma:

May 31, 2013, 7:30 p.m.: The alarm sounded. It was a house fire. As the firefighters gathered and donned their gear, the sky turned an eerie yellow-gray, signaling a severe storm. The rain came down in sheets. This was Moore, Okla.; a town reeling from some of the most devastating tornadoes on record—and another lurked overhead.

The Texas AFL-CIO and Texas AFT partnered this weekend with a Univision station in Austin to promote reading and academic success at the Austin edition of the COPA Univision amateur soccer tournament. The event included adult and youth men's and women's teams. During the tournament, more than 2,000 people visited the AFL-CIO/AFT exhibit and volunteers gave out more than 1,500 books to children in attendance.

While recovery operations continue in Moore, Okla., after one of the worst and deadliest tornadoes on record, relief efforts are still underway. The Oklahoma State AFL-CIO and central labor council community service liaisons are working through the United Way.  

When Jim Pulley, a UAW member in Spring Hill, Tenn., saw the devastation caused by the tornadoes that hit Moore, Okla., he jumped into action and set up collection boxes at all of the General Motors Co. (GM) plant entrances in his hometown. His union, Local 1853, expanded on his initiative by involving its Community Services Committee. GM and community groups also got involved. Ten days later, the combined efforts of the union and the community resulted in three semi-trailer truckloads of supplies headed to help the tornado survivors.

The Union Sportsmen's Alliance (USA) Adopt-a-Park initiative is making sure hikers in Montgomery Bell State Park near Nashville, Tenn., have a safe new bridge to cross a 30-foot-wide creek. Volunteers from the Nashville Building and Construction Trades Council (BCTC) are spending weekends in May building a sturdy, permanent bridge to replace a small, temporary structure further down the creek after a 2010 flood washed away the original bridge.

When the tornado hit Moore, Okla., on Monday, International Union of Police Associations (IUPA) members Andrew Terry, Jay Keehn, Michael Myers and David Carpenter were quick to respond to the tragedy in their hometown. All of the members of IUPA Local 3 offered their services, as did members of numerous other locals in the area. The response was so overwhelming that officials on the ground had to put many volunteers on standby.

She said she’d get a Mohawk. She got a Mohawk.

“I’m sporting a new ‘do,’” says Alice Phillips, business manager for Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 483 of Tacoma, Wash. “It feels…light. It’s different.”

The shaved head and spiked hair came about because Phillips wanted her union local to double last year’s donation of union-made peanut butter as part of the Letter Carriers’ (NALC's) National Food Drive. The 21st annual drive to combat hunger is the nation’s largest single-day food drive and is held annually on the second Saturday in May in 10,000 cities and towns in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In 2012, letter carriers collected 70 million pounds of food donations along their postal routes.