Members of Fire Fighters (IAFF) locals are part of the emergency response team on the scene in West, Texas, following last night’s massive explosion at a fertilizer plant that killed as many as 15 people, injured 160 and left many missing, including a member of Dallas IAFF Local 58, who lives in West. IAFF sends us this report.

Hazmat teams from IAFF Local 478 in Waco, Texas, and IAFF Local 2505 in Killeen, Texas, and other emergency service personnel are responding to the scene of the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, which has killed as many as 15 people, including several firefighters, according to reports.

Thomas Perez, President Obama’s nominee for secretary of labor, told the Senate Judiciary Committee today his top priority, if confirmed, would be “jobs, jobs and jobs.” Perez also told the panel:

The mission of the Department of Labor is the mission of America…building ladders to the middle class.

With the federal minimum wage stuck at $7.25 an hour and an increase facing stiff opposition from congressional Republicans, coalitions  of union, community, faith and other groups are mobilizing to win increases in state and local minimum wage levels. Here’s a look at some recent wins and campaigns where AFL-CIO state federations and central labor councils are playing big roles.

More than 11 million aspiring citizens will have the opportunity to access a road map to citizenship under the terms of a commonsense immigration reform bill that was introduced today.

While immigration reform advocates are still examining the legislation’s 844 pages, here are highlights that address some of the united labor movement’s key immigration principles, including moving forward on creating a road map to citizenship.

Working America, the AFL-CIO’s more than 3 million-member community affiliate for people without unions, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. To mark the occasion, Working America tomorrow will unveil its “50 in 5” initiative to expand into all 50 states in five years, as well as new efforts to organize workers at their workplaces. Says Working America Executive Director Karen Nussbaum:

Every day, we talk to people struggling to support their families or piece together a living with their current jobs. These are people who want to see changes in their communities or on the job. This expansion allows working people to make a difference in new states and communities.

Republicans in Congress have renewed their decades-old attack on the 40-hour workweek. Once again, they are pushing so-called “comp time” legislation that would allow employers to stop giving workers any extra pay for overtime work.

Justice triumphed in the squared circle in downtown Raleigh, N.C., in a masked Mexican luchadoras (female wrestlers) Tax Day rumble that pitted Juicy Buns, wrestling as “The People’s Champion,” against corporate-created and -backed “Champion of the Powerful,” The Scrambler.

Locked-out workers at American Crystal Sugar plants in Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa will soon be returning to work after they ratified a contract late last week. The company locked out 1,300 workers, members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM), in August 2011.

Did you know that the CEOs of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, the corporate front group that wants to cut Social Security and Medicare and lower corporate taxes, have parked more than $418 billion of untaxed corporate profits overseas? Overall it is estimated that U.S. corporations have as much as $1.9 trillion sheltered overseas. That would make a nice down payment on fixing the debt.

You can read about "Fix the Debt" and more in the 2013 edition of the AFL-CIO’s Executive PayWatch launched today. PayWatch not only shines a light on Fix the Debt hypocrisy, but it also explores the huge wage gap between CEO pay and the average U.S. worker. PayWatch started in 1997. 

Visit www.paywatch.org.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), whose disdain for working people is no secret, last month told state Labor Department hearing officers, who decide unemployment benefit appeals, that they better start deciding more of those cases in favor of employers who want those benefits denied, the Maine Sun Journal reports.  

At that gathering, LePage scolded about eight administrative hearing officers and their supervisors, complaining that too many cases on appeal from the Bureau of Unemployment were being decided in favor of employees. He said the officers were doing their jobs poorly, sources said.