On the heels of the AFL-CIO's national convention, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo W. Gerard and up-and-coming USW leader Nick Gaitaud sat down with GRITtv's Laura Flanders to talk about the present and future of the labor movement.

Check out the video in this blog post. 

The conduct of the New York State Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) in rehabilitating the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge can only be described as anti-American.

The MTA plans to send $235.7 million of Americans' hard-earned toll dollars to China for foreign steel and foreign fabrication to renovate a bridge over the Hudson River that Americans built with American steel and American fabrication 50 years ago.

On Wednesday, top leaders of Brazil's largest trade union federation, Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT), including President Vagner Freitas, João Felicio and Artur Henrique, met with U.S. union leaders at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., to discuss strategies for joint action, priorities and partnerships moving forward.

Oscar came to the United States at the age of 16 to work. There were no jobs for him in his native Guatemala, and he felt obligated to help support his parents.

He was lured across borders by the promise of work. He believed, as so many immigrants do, that there would be a job for him in America.

For the past five years, he has worked at a Los Angeles carwash that cheated him and other immigrant workers out of pay, refused protective gear and even denied drinking water.

This is a cross-post from United Steelworkers (USW). 

Workers in a northeast Maryland Siemens’ plant, who recently signed affiliation cards with the USW, have become targets of the company’s anti-union philosophy, said USW last week. The company has launched a full-blown union-busting campaign, hiring an anti-union consultant, Ken Cannon, who advertises “40 years of experience supporting managements' efforts to remain union free.”

Unless the nation’s campaign laws that allow corporations and the wealthy unlimited—and, many times, anonymous—campaign contributions are changed, “we will lose the right to collectively bargain,” within the next 10 years, says United Steelworkers (USW) Present Leo W. Gerard.

Speaking to a group of USW members in Homestead, Pa., over the weekend, Gerard warned that without a massive turnout of union voters this fall, the unprecedented flood of campaign cash to candidates and barely concealed extremist front groups could swing the election to candidates dedicated to destroying the union movement.

Trayvon Martin's shooting rightly provoked widespread indignation and outrage throughout America. Yet this weekend, our government could certify that Colombia has fulfilled its workers' rights obligations and allow the U.S. free trade agreement with Colombia to fully take effect.

That, says Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard in a post at AlterNet, would be turning "our backs on the 30 trade unionists slain in Colombia last year and the six that Justice for Colombia reports have been murdered already this year."

Dave Johnson, a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, sends us this.

The Take Back the  American Dream conference opened Tuesday with a discussion on the “Contract for the American Dream.” Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change began by saying that there is a movement in America today and it’s not the tea party—it’s the American Dream Movement. People are working to build a huge movement that can meet this huge moment.

Dave Johnson, a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, sends us this.

The United States needs a “green industrial revolution” to breath new life into American manufacturing and bring back from overseas badly needed manufacturing jobs, experts told progressive activists at today’s opening session of the “Take Back the American Dream” conference in Washington, D.C. (Click here for video highlights.)

Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs sends us this report.

Mexican independent union leaders traveled to Washington, D.C., to brief, educate and express urgency to congressional leaders on the labor struggles and issues they’re currently facing in Mexico. Members of the Mexican Electrical Workers’ Union (SME) have remained in Mexico City’s main square (Zocalo) for the past six months, demanding justice over the administration’s war on unions. The government fired the SME’s 44,000 members in October 2009 and over the past two years, the fight over the privatization of electricity and the repression of one of Mexico’s oldest and most democratic unions has escalated. The briefing shed light on this ongoing struggle and the need for U.S. solidarity.