As part of a strong holiday program, Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 668 puts up the entire holiday lighting display for downtown Lafayette, Ind. Between 25 and 50 volunteers show up weeks in advance of the local holiday festival and install the lights in the downtown plaza and county courthouse rotunda, a tradition the local has taken part in for 65 years. Members continue to make sure all the lights are working and fix any problems that come up throughout the holiday season.

In Omaha, Neb., painters volunteer to ring the Salvation Army bells. 

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.

UAW locals 531 and 2317 in Lafayette, Ind., served a piping hot Christmas meal on Dec. 19 to local people who live on a low income or don't have a home. The union members split the cost of the meal between the two locals.

See more photos on the United Way of Greater Lafayette's Facebook page. 

It could have been a pretty bleak and hungry holiday season for the families of the 1,300 American Crystal Sugar workers who have been locked out of their jobs since August 2011. But thanks to the combined efforts of the unions of the St. Paul (Minn.) Regional Labor Federation and the American Income Life Insurance Co., there’ll be presents under the trees and food in the pantries.

Lee Sandberg, communications coordinator for the New Jersey State AFL-CIO, sends us this update.

The New Jersey State AFL-CIO, working together with its Executive Board members, central labor councils, Building Trades councils and affiliated unions, amassed a mountainous collection of union-made toys that was proudly presented to a team of U.S. Marines today in Trenton, on behalf of the U.S. Marine Corps' “Toys for Tots” program.

Several years ago, Roy Foster, president of the AFL-CIO Central Labor Council of Atlantic and Cape May Counties, was flipping through the radio stations in his car while driving through Philadelphia and landed on a program that peaked his interest.

Jon Israel, a Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) member, didn’t plan on falling off the roof of a house he was working on in Barrington, R.I. a few weeks ago. He also didn’t plan on the local labor movement organizing a holiday fundraiser to help his family get through his recovery from the serious injuries he sustained from the fall.

Yet there is a long history in the labor movement of stepping up community service during the holiday season. In Rhode Island, local labor unions are starting early with the holiday cheer this year. In addition to the fundraiser for Jon Israel, union members in Rhode Island are organizing a wide variety of community service opportunities.

More than 1,300 Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers in Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa have been locked out by American Crystal Sugar for more than a year and a half. These working families are being denied incomes and health care benefits.  

This is a cross-post from the Machinists News, a blog focused on news of interest to members of the Machinists (IAM) District Lodge 751.

Machinists District Lodge 751 raised nearly $299,000 for Guide Dogs of America in 2012.

District President Tom Wroblewski presented the California-based charity with a check for $298,949.66 at the annual Guide Dogs Banquet on Nov. 17 in Las Vegas.

That’s a record one-year fundraising total for District 751, which is Guide Dogs of America’s top fundraiser across North America.

Watch "IAM's Guide Dogs of America Changes Lives" on YouTube.