UAW President Bob King tells In These Times’ Molly M. Ginty:

If we restructure the city just like we restructured the auto industry, there’s hope that Detroit, too, can see a turnaround.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent C. Gray still hasn’t said if he will sign or veto the living wage bill for workers at big-box stores such as Walmart. So, as they say on public television telethons, “keep those phones ringing.”  All you need to do is click here and enter your phone number, ZIP code (you must be a D.C. resident) and email. Within a minute, you’ll get a phone call at the number you entered that will connect you directly to Gray’s office.

Detractors of public education received a big blow last week when it was revealed that former Indiana schools superintendent Tony Bennett manipulated the state's school grading formula to ensure a charter school run by a major Republican donor received an "A" grade. 

Bennett, who was just recently Florida's education commissioner before he resigned last week, was pressured to step down after the Associated Press published the following email to his chief of staff:

This will be a HUGE problem for us….They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work.

We still haven’t heard from Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent C. Gray on if he plans to sign a living wage bill for workers in big-box stores like Walmart that operate in the District of Columbia. So let’s give him a call and urge him to sign the Large Retailer Accountability Act (LRAA).

Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent C. Gray says he still hasn’t decided if he will sign a living wage bill for workers in big-box stores like Walmart that operate in the District of Columbia. If you live in the district, here’s your chance to tell the mayor to do the right thing.

Click here to send Gray an email urging him to sign the Large Retailer Accountability Act (LRAA).

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has targeted Chicago teachers again. This time with an announcement last week that Chicago Public Schools (CPS) will layoff more than 3,000 teachers and school staff. This comes on the heels of the city’s closing of nearly 50 schools and layoffs of some 850 educators. Along with the layoffs, steep budget cuts are in the works.

Walmart, the country’s largest private employer and huge wielder of political influence, is taking on their greatest challenge yet: A college junior writing an op-ed in her student newspaper. Georgetown University student Erin Riordan wrote a piece for The Hoya, the school’s student-run newspaper, in support of the Large Retailer Accountability Act (LRAA), which would raise the minimum wage for big-box retail employees to $12.50 an hour.To deal with this threat, Walmart dispatched Steven Restivo, a senior director of communications at Walmart, to write a responding op-ed.

In case you missed it, Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) recently compared himself to Franklin Delano Roosevelt (?!) and left the door open to expanding Act 10 [a law that limits most collective bargaining powers for most public employees] for police and firefighters. While Gov. Walker gears up for his spotlight at the National Governors Association, Wisconsin workers are still feeling the lasting impacts of a struggling economy.

The North Carolina legislature has moved to the extreme right in the 2013 session, passing a series of laws that assault the rights of the state's residents. The session comes to an end this week, but the damage from the laws that the Republican-led body has passed, and the governor is likely to sign, will be around for many years to come.

Detroit’s bankruptcy filing “must not be used as a tool to impoverish city of Detroit workers or retirees,” says the AFL-CIO Executive Council, in a statement from its July meeting.

City workers already have made severe concessions to keep the city afloat. They are not to blame for Detroit’s financial problems, yet they have been making sacrifices all along the way to help the city out….The AFL-CIO will continue to support our city of Detroit active and retired members in their fight to maintain dignity on the job, a safe workplace, fair wages and benefits for their labor, and against cuts in the pensions they have paid for and earned.