J. Goodison employees held a rally at a Rhode Island shipyard last week. They were trying to get management to recognize their efforts to unionize. Currently there are over 30 employees who have signed union cards with International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) District 11: 32 Goodison employees have signed union cards, said…

  Wrigley’s just spent $50 million on a 145,000 square-foot Skittles factory expansion in Yorkville, IL. They hired members of the local building trades to complete the 1.5 year construction project, and the results were remarkable: IBEW Local 461’s workforce reached 30,000 hours without a lost time incident while working on two…

  Walmart does not pay its workers very well, but that’s not a reason to write a blog post at this point, is it? What about if they paid so poorly that it cost the United States twelve times what we spend on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration? Well, they do. According to a [&hellip…;

  “Why are there no labor unions in America?” So begins a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post by author and American history professor Kimberly Phillips-Fein. Phillips-Fein, who teaches at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, is quick to point out that millions of Americans do still belong…

  Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says he wants to bring jobs back home to America. Apparently the billionaire businessman also wants to give those jobs away to temporary guest workers. Trump is currently looking to staff two of his Florida properties — the Mar-A-Largo resort in Palm Springs and the Trump National Jupiter…

  New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s valiant crusade against unemployment continues with a $30 million investment in statewide pre-apprenticeship construction job programs. The Urban Youth Jobs Program uses a tax-credit incentive system to connect minority and at-risk youth with job opportunities. Cuomo’s announcement brings total…

  The Huffington Post recently featured the amazing story of 26-year-old Matias Ferreira, who lost both of his legs five years ago in Afghanistan. He has miraculously settled into a successful civilian life with help from the Helmets to Hardhats program.  The man who went from not being able to walk to being able to [&hellip…;

  Newly released data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that the percentage of foreign-born workers in the U.S. workforce is at a two-decade high. In 2015 there were 26.3 million foreign-born persons in the U.S. labor force, comprising 16.7 percent of the total.  The figure is the highest since the BLS began [&hellip…;

  In a post titled “You Won’t Read About This!,” United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 12 business manager, Harry Bretty, highlights the 58th Annual Massachusetts AFL-CIO Scholarship Breakfast, at which almost $590,000 in scholarships were awarded to the children of union members.   The Massachusetts AFL-CIO website…

  A new first-of-its-kind study has found that the economic outcomes of veterans would be profoundly affected if states with strong-to-moderate prevailing wage laws were to weaken their standards.  The study was conducted by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute’s Frank Manzo IV; University of Illinois-Urbana Professor Robert Bruno;…

  San Francisco Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner struck out nine San Diego Padres in a winning effort this week, improving his record to 2-2. What’s more, the big night boosted the profile of his charitable partnership with Carhartt. Bumgarner is donating $500 to the Helmets to Hardhats (H2H) program for every strikeout he has this…

  A recent CNBC Reality Check column cast doubt on the widespread yet false theory that there is currently a “labor shortage” in the construction industry.  As workers advocates have argued in recent years, simple economics disprove the presence “labor shortage” theory.  A 2014 paper from economist Dale Berman of Michigan State…