A replacement worker at American Crystal Sugar Co.’s East Grand Forks, Minn., plant was seriously injured last month, suffering severe burns when he was hit with hot liquid that spewed from a tank, according to news reports.  

The company has been operating with replacement workers since it locked out its highly trained 1,300 member workforce in August 2011. The locked-out workers are members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) and worked at plants in Iowa, Minnesota and North Dakota.

The partition that separates diners from the inner workings of the restaurant industry toppled for Saru Jayaraman shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Fekkak Mamdouh, one of the headwaiters of the restaurant housed on the top floor of the World Trade Center, approached Jayaraman seven months after the attacks. His former boss deemed him and his former crew “not experienced enough” to work in his new Times Square restaurant. Jayaraman, a 27-year-old organizer of immigrant women, took up the case to advocate for the displaced workers, organized protests and won—most of the workers were awarded the good jobs their former boss promised.

Today the nation’s top Hispanic civil rights groups, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), all came out in support of the global boycott of Hyatt hotels.

Communications Workers of America (CWA) has reached two new tentative agreements with AT&T divisions with some 40,000 CWA members.   

Details of a tentative four-year agreement are being sent to CWA members who work for AT&T Mobility in 36 states and the District of Columbia. The workers are customer service representatives, technicians and retail store workers. Also, the union announced a tentative agreement with AT&T West with about 18,000 CWA members at AT&T operations in California and Nevada.

Nissan technician Betty Jones sent this message to working family activists today:

I’m a technician at the Nissan plant in Canton, Miss., and I’m proud to work there. I want our company to succeed, and I never give anything less than my best.
And that’s one of the reasons my co-workers and I are organizing for a voice on the job. We believe that by organizing collectively we can work together with Nissan to make the company and our community better.

One group of workers at Boeing’s Pacific Northwest facilities voted to accept the company’s latest contract offer, while a second voted to reject the deal and to authorize a strike if necessary, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA)/IFPTE Local 2001 announced Tuesday.

With the promise from several Democratic candidates—one of whom is likely to succeed New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg next year—that they will “revisit’ school transportation contracts to ensure that the experienced and trained school bus drivers and bus matrons will be treated fairly, the members of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1181 have ended their strike.

The Labor Innovation Fund for the Twenty-First Century, aka LIFT, a collaborative project of the AFL-CIO with the Ford Foundation, the Solidago Foundation and the New World Foundation, was recently highlighted by the Berger-Marks Foundation. LIFT gives grants to partnership projects, “conversations around common agendas," and other efforts to link the union movement with community organizing focused on workers’ rights, decent jobs and a fair economy.

Some 250 registered nurses at Sierra Medical Center in El Paso are the latest group of Texas nurses to vote to join the National Nurses Organizing Committee-Texas (NNOC-Texas), the Texas affiliate of National Nurses United (NNU). Sierra RN Nena Brown said the election:

Is a mandate by nurses at Sierra who are determined to improve the quality of patient care and be the strongest possible advocates for our patients and our community.

The National Federation of Nurses (NFN) will affiliate with AFT, the leaders of the two unions announced today. Some 34,000 registered nurses in Montana, Ohio, Oregon and Washington State are NFN members.