In his Friday edition of the Texas AFL-CIO News, Ed Sills the state federation’s communications director, points out two articles of interest you may have missed on the labor movement’s southern organizing strategy and a lifetime achievement award for poet and former UAW member Philip Levine.

If Texas working families and their unions are going to turn red, right-wing, "right to work" for less Texas blue and replace the corporate-beholden, anti-union politicians with lawmakers who will respect the rights of workers, "We'll have to do it one [state] House district at a time," Richard Shaw, secretary-treasurer of the Harris County (Texas) AFL-CIO Council, told participants at the Winning for Texas Workers action session at the AFL-CIO 2013 Convention this afternoon.

The United Way and the AFL-CIO share core values that are at the center of the organizations’ long partnership, United Way of Tarrant County CEO Tim McKinney told delegates at the recent Texas AFL-CIO convention.

The AFL-CIO constitution states that work is what we do to better ourselves, to build dreams and to support our families. But it says work is more than that. Work cures, creates, builds, innovates and shapes the future. Work connects us all. These are very powerful words and United Way shares this value.

The Texas AFL-CIO and Texas AFT partnered this weekend with a Univision station in Houston to promote reading, immigration reform and workers' rights at the Houston edition of the COPA Univision amateur soccer tournament. The event included adult men's and women's and youth teams. During the tournament, several thousand people visited the AFL-CIO/AFT exhibit and volunteers gave out more than 1,800 books to children in attendance. Besides the ice cream truck, the exhibit was the second most popular, said Joe Arabie of the Texas AFL-CIO. 

Take the nation’s fastest growing soccer tournament, add an emphasis on academic success, a dash of workers’ rights and the Texas union movement and you’ve got a recipe for a unique and innovative Latino community outreach opportunity.

That’s what is happening this weekend in Austin, where the Texas AFL-CIO and Texas AFT are partnering with a local Univision personality at the COPA Univision amateur soccer tournament that will include both adult men’s and women’s teams and teams of boys and girls from 6 to 18 years old. They will be hosting players and their parents, as well as event spectators at a special tent on the grounds of Northeast Metro Park, the site of the two-day tournament festival.

Thanks to what Texas AFL-CIO President Becky Moeller calls a “historic, robust” bipartisan effort, the Texas Legislature approved on Monday a "Buy American" provision for water projects that establishes a preference for iron, steel and manufactured goods produced in the United States. Says Moeller:

In a major win for nurses, patients and three Texas communities, registered nurses (RNs) in El Paso, Corpus Christi and Brownsville gave final approval to contracts yesterday in first-ever collective bargaining agreements, reports National Nurses United (NNU). 

Texas AFL-CIO Communications Director Ed Sills sends us this report from his daily e-mail newsletter. Sign up for the Texas AFL-CIO E-News at labor@texasaflcio.org.   

A three-judge federal panel ruled Tuesday that Texas’ redrawing of political boundaries for Congress and the legislature discriminated against Hispanics and must be set aside under the federal Voting Rights Act.

Cristina Tzintzun, executive director of the Workers Defense Project, and Michael Cunningham, executive director and secretary/treasurer of the Texas State Building and Construction Trades Council, send us this. 

Few construction labor leaders have ever thought of Texas as an easy place to organize. The state legislature is controlled by a super majority of Republicans that are sternly anti-immigrant and anti-worker. Construction business interests have a firm grip on the legislature. The biggest Republican donor in the state is Bob Perry, of Perry Homes, one of the largest home builders in Texas. That is why the efforts of unions and community groups to reform the construction industry in the state are so significant.

Instead of getting angry over labor issues, have fun and project that fun through social media, two nationally known progressives told an audience of activists at Texas AFL-CIO headquarters.

Justin Krebs, a “political and cultural entrepreneur” who co-founded Living Liberally and wrote 538 Ways to Live, Work and Play Like a Liberal, and Negin Farsad, a comedian and filmmaker named one of the “50 Funniest Women” by Huffington Post, said humor and the use of networks like Twitter can reach people who might not have been disposed to listen to a drier union message.

“Comedy can be a Trojan horse, in a way,” Krebs said, during a workshop held as part of labor’s “Work Connects Us All” activities during the South by Southwest music, film and interactive festivals in Austin.