In New Orleans this Super Bowl week, there are plenty of fans sporting 49ers' red and gold caps and jerseys and Ravens' purple and black gear. But there also are thousands of union members—including many from unions in the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO (GNO)—who proudly display their union label and are making the game possible and the fan experience in the Crescent City run smoothly.

A coalition of Michigan labor unions—including the UAW—and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked a judge Thursday to strike down the recently passed "right to work" for less law because it was enacted while the public was locked out of the Capitol, which is a violation of the Open Meetings Act, the First Amendment and the Michigan Constitution.

Actors’ Equity (AEA) announced the purchase of an 18,000-square-foot building in North Hollywood, Calif., that will serve as the new western region headquarters.  The new building is located at 5636 Tujunga Ave., in the NoHo Arts District.

During the past few years, as Republicans have taken control of state legislatures and governors’ offices, the attacks on workers and their unions have gone from the extreme we saw in Wisconsin and Michigan to the more subtle, as we are seeing today in Virginia.

Legislation in the state House and Senate, that anti-worker lawmakers had hoped would fly under the radar, would reduce labor representation on the 29-member Virginia Workforce Council (VWC) to just one person.

Here's a look at some of the key battles in the states from the past week.

Two more Republican governors have come out in support of expanding Medicaid in their states, realizing that not only is the program a good deal for them, but that it provides additional benefits for their residents. In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer discovered that expanding Medicaid would save her state $353 million. Meanwhile, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval projected that expansion would save his state $17 million.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is seeking to cut costs by requesting bids for school bus operations that, for the first time in 30 years, do not contain a requirement that proven, experienced and trained drivers and bus monitors retain their jobs. Over the years, drivers in New York have developed a culture around their profession that rewards hard work and increases safety for children. Now that culture is in danger, reports Al Baker of the New York Times.

Tomorrow, western New Yorkers will take a bus from Buffalo to Albany to call on the state's leaders to raise the minimum wage. 

At $7.25 per hour, New York's minimum wage remains decades out of date.
 A full-time minimum wage worker earns just $15,080 per year in New York—far less than what is needed to afford the state's high cost of living. 

Ask Los Angeles Times reporter Alana Semuels why union membership in California rose by 100,000 in 2012, and she’ll give you a simple answer:

“Latino workers.”

To explain the contrast between the trend in California and the United States as a whole—where union membership dropped last year by 400,000—Semuels turned to some credible sources, including Steve Smith of the state labor federation who cited “an appetite among these low-wage workers to try to get a collective voice to give themselves opportunity and a middle-class lifestyle.”

States are engaged in economic warfare on each other and it's costing taxpayers billions of dollars. That's the message of a new report from Good Jobs First titled The Job-Creation Shell Game.