Kathleen von Eitzen, a baker at Panera Bread's Battle Creek, Mich., location, just wants to be respected for her craft and the work she does every day.

I simply want to be respected and recognized as the artisan baker that Panera advertises that I am.

Von Eitzen is one of 18 bakers who recently voted to be represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 70. 

Read more from BCTGM: NLRB Orders Panera to Bargain with Michigan Bakers. 

Gaby Pacheco, the leader of the DREAM youth movement from Miami and one of the co-founders of Students Working for Equal Rights, tells her story in a recent TEDx Talk. Pacheco moved to the United States from Ecuador when she was eight. She grew up a hardworking student who was elected student government president of Miami Dade Community College and the statewide community college student government organization. Along the way she faced many obstacles as an aspiring citizen, from an encounter with the Ku Klux Klan to the inability to find work because of her lack of papers verifying citizenship.

Office clerical workers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, members of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 63, are striking in order to protect jobs in America that pay well and help drive the economy. Employers walked out of negotiations Saturday, prompting International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) Acting General Secretary Stephen Cotton to condemn the international carriers and terminal operators.

For the fourth time, locked-out American Crystal Sugar workers rejected an identical contract offer from the management company. The workers are members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM).

Dealers are the face of Las Vegas, says Jeff Jaeger, president of Transport Workers (TWU) Local 721. Caesars Palace dealers recently gained their first contract on the job. Now they have the protection that only a written contract can provide in terms of wages, health care, tips and other working conditions. The dealers organized with TWU.

Watch TWU's new video, "Support Your Dealers," to learn more about the recent worker victory in Las Vegas. 

Fast-food workers in New York City today walked off the job to protest what they said "were low wages and retaliation against several workers who have backed the unionization campaign," writes Steve Greenhouse of the New York Times. 

Imagine a time when a professional baseball player was technically "owned" for life by his team and couldn't play for any other team unless the change was approved by his owner. Imagine a time when professional athletes had few rights beyond whatever their owners granted them—low pay, weak pensions, no real compensation for the wear-and-tear on their bodies, no freedom of movement or ability to determine where they lived or for what team they played. Imagine a time when the system made team owners very wealthy off the hard work of the players without allowing the players to share in the revenue their efforts produced.

Supported by global labor activists and unions, a Mississippi Nissan worker announced the UAW’s global organizing campaign yesterday at the third annual LabourStart conference in Sydney, Australia. At Nissan’s Canton, Miss., plant, there are more than 3,000 workers who want a voice at work to improve conditions and secure decent work for more members of their community. In addition to reducing safety problems and resulting injuries at the plant, workers want to unite to build power and raise their voice so that Nissan will directly hire more of its workforce and not depend so heavily on temporary workers. Nissan’s production model increasingly tries to avoid the responsibility of being an employer while reaping the gains of all production workers.

Check out UAW's site: http://DoBetterNissan.org. 

Domestic workers, such as caregivers and nannies, make all forms of other work possible and play an increasingly significant role in the U.S. economy. However, a new national study found, on average, domestic workers earn little more than minimum wage and few receive benefits like Social Security, health insurance or paid sick days.

Check out an excerpt of the AFL-CIO's new Innovators website feature, "No Depression: Pharmaceutical-Labor Alliance Flourishes."

“I certainly admit going in with an attitude of let’s-see-what-this-is-about,” Johnson & Johnson Vice President Donald Bohn says about cooperating with labor unions. “It turns out we have a lot more in common than you might think.”

And that’s why, about four years ago, Johnson & Johnson joined the Pharmaceutical Industry Labor-Management Association (PILMA), a growing coalition of pharmaceutical industry giants and the major building trades unions. Its goal is to foster good jobs in the domestic pharmaceutical industry while increasing access to affordable medicines.