U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis resigned today.

Ten of the nation’s largest banks agreed earlier this week to settle charges of foreclosure abuse with federal regulators. After the housing bubble burst, banks allegedly processed foreclosures improperly and mishandled homeowners’ applications for mortgage modifications. The resulting foreclosure crisis hurt all working families. Homes lost value, especially in communities of color that were among the hardest hit.

In some year-end reviews of labor in 2012 (here and here), we see an important missed connection that the union movement is committed to building in 2013. While these reviews identify important worker struggles throughout the year, they fail to recognize that all workers—immigrant, public, private, low-wage and middle-class—share values and experiences that unite them in a broad-based union movement. A major theme of many of last year’s important labor struggles was how immigrant workers and the union movement came together in local communities to win justice.

While congressional Republicans are heavily focused on cutting Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare benefits and other harmful budget cuts that threaten the 98%, a better approach is to eliminate loopholes that allow the wealthiest 2% of Americans and Wall Street to pay much less than their fair share of taxes.  Focusing on loopholes keeps money in the hands of working families, which helps the economy grow without increasing hardship and economic insecurity for working people.

This is a cross-post from the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center’s Tula Connell.

Some 52 million people older than 15—primarily women—labor as domestic workers around the world, according to a report released today by the International Labor Organization (ILO). Of those, 83 percent are women. The vast number of domestic workers, 21.4 million, are in Asia and the Pacific region, with 19.6 million in Latin America, 5.2 million in Africa and 2.1 million in the Middle East.

SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., not only provides vital health care services to residents of New York City’s most populous borough—regardless of income or insurance status—but also sheltered and cared for patients from other hospitals and nursing homes that were forced to shut down as Hurricane Sandy tore through the area.

Yesterday, hundreds of workers and community and faith allies rallied in Albany, urging lawmakers to turn back moves to downsize and privatize SUNY Downstate.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will consider a rule to require disclosure of political spending by publicly traded corporations in April. By putting this rule making on its agenda, the SEC is responding to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, which ended restrictions on independent corporate spending for public communications that influence elections.