The latest stories from the front lines of the labor fight across the country...

Keith Rivers, an organizer for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in North Carolina, is fighting to build union strength in one of the toughest anti-labor states in the union. North Carolina is a right-to-work (for less) state with the lowest percentage (only 2 percent) of unionized workers in the United States. In a video released Wednesday, Rivers describes the challenges he and other organizers face in the state, and while he describes it as very challenging, but is happy to say that they've had some success in recent years.

IBEW in North Carolina's mission is to:

Ensuring our member electricians and linemen receive the representation they need and the wages and benefits they deserve; and

Recruiting capable apprentices and furnishing them with top-quality, certified career educational programs in state-of-the-art training facilities.

Rivers works on letting North Carolina electricians and linemen know what IBEW stands for and trying to get people to join the union.

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A widely-lauded Superbowl ad from Sunday's football game starring Clint Eastwood declared that "It's Half Time in America." The ad had Eastwood poignantly talking about the troubles that the country faces and the fear that Americans are dealing with during a turbulent economy. The final message of the ad, is that we're all going to pull together and rally to win in the "second half." The Chrysler ad evoked the auto industry bailout in a positive way and showed various images of citizens protesting against the ills they see across the country, including an image from protests at the Wisconsin capitol from last year. That's where the problem comes in. Apparently the images were doctored to take pro-union sentiment out of them. Chrysler apparently had no problem exploiting citizen discontent to sell cars, but couldn't go as far as to allow unions to be shown in a positive light.

Many in Wisconsin recognized the misty evening shot of the King Street entrance to the Wisconsin Capitol with Colonel Hans Christian Heg, who led the all-Scandinavian Regiment into the Civil War, in the foreground. Recognizing the shot, Wisconsinites went wild on Facebook and Twitter. But what the cheeseheads quickly started to realize is that they did not recognize the protest signs in the shot. Apparently, Chrysler was comfortable using the Wisconsin Capitol shot as a symbol of the nation’s discontent, but actually using pro-union signs was too much for the bailed-out car company. Somewhere along the line, red hearts and text were removed from the “Care for your educators like they care for your kids” signs. Plus, Madison Teachers Inc. signs—MTI in a circle—were weirdly written over ...

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After four new murders of labor leaders in Columbia in January, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called on U.S. President Barack Obama to delay the implementation of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement indefinitely. The agreement, which was passed last year, was delayed for years because of violence against labor leaders. More than 2900 Colombians involved in the labor movement have been killed in the last 25 years. Colombia is the deadliest country for union members in the world. Killings have continued unabated in 2012:

The letter states that through January, one union member was killed by Colombian troops, a second was shot to death along with his wife, a third worker was “brutally murdered” and a fourth union member employed by the National Industry of Sodas (Coca-Cola) was “murdered by gunfire.”

When the bill passed, it included a Labor Action Plan designed to deal with the violence, but Colombian labor leaders say that has failed:

We applaud the creation of the April 7, 2011, U.S.-Colombia Labor Action Plan that intends to take important steps in addressing endemic labor issues in Colombia. However, the Plan continues to face serious challenges in its implementation. Union leaders and labor activists continue to be assassinated, threatened, and intimidated, and the perpetrators enjoy almost complete impunity.

Despite losing the most egregious anti-union measure in the Federal Aviation Administration re-authorization bill, the so-called 'compromise' that Congress has settled on remains staunchly anti-union and assaults the rights of workers in the airline and rail industries. Republicans had previously included a provision that would count all employees who don't vote in an election to create a union as "no" votes. That was removed from the current version of the proposal. However, a number of anti-union provisions still exist:

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Nearly 150 truck drivers effectively shut down shipping out of the Port of Seattle when they went to the state capitol in Olympia instead of the port, to protest dangerous work conditions in the trucking industry. Drivers were so concerned about the way the industry treats them that they risked their careers to make their voices heard.

This week the truck drivers – who toil under the guise of false self-employment – are making it their job to sound the alarm on occupational hazards, overweight containers, shoddy equipment, risks to motorists, and the culprits responsible for these rampant safety violations: their employers and their giant retail shipper clients like Wal-Mart, Sears, and Target.

The trucking bosses at Pacer, Seattle Freight, Western Ports and others were stunned, but the state troopers weren’t. Washington’s top cops testified before lawmakers right alongside the workers, detailing a dizzying array of dangers associated with the drayage industry: Chronic safety violations so serious that an investigative journalist discovered late last year that officers pulled 32% of rigs they inspected outside the terminals off the road — double the rate for trucks throughout the state. When specially trained troopers conducted more thorough inspections in 2011, King 5 TV reported, 58% of Port of Seattle cargo vehicles were yanked. And according to Captain Jason Berry’s testimony, an astonishing 80% have been put out of service during certain recent time periods.

The drivers called upon legislators to support HB 2527, which would address many of the concerns they have. They called upon allies to help spread their story and make the dangers of the trucking industry more widely known:

Semere Woldu, who has been hauling cargo at the Port of Seattle for 8 years, told the panel:

“Our work is extremely dangerous. So the safety laws are very important. Unfortunately though, we drivers are forced to pay for violations that we are not responsible for. We often get tickets or are cited for faulty equipment that we don’t own. One time, my boss knew I had a heavy load. He told me to go by the scale early in the morning when it was closed to avoid having the load weighed.”

More drivers cited these illegal pressures their employers put them under, and shared their fears for their personal safety and the lives of motorists. “Every day, I haul two or three loads that are overweight, possibly putting myself and others at risk,” said Aynalem Moba, a 14-year port veteran. “The truck could tip over. I’m afraid I might kill myself or someone else. Sometimes we’re carrying hazardous materials, and we don’t know it.”

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Minnesota State Senator Dave Thompson, an extremist closely aligned to the tea party, introduced legislation to put a right-to-work (for less) amendment on the ballot in the state for the 2012 election. The legislation will go through the Republican-controlled legislature with no problem. And despite the fact that the state's governor is Democrat Mark Drayton, who is certain to veto the bill, Republicans in the legislature have the numbers to override the veto. The amendment is certain to make it to the November ballot, where its fate is much more uncertain, with the Minnesota electorate being more moderate than its legislature.

Republicans in the state have also put an anti-gay marriage amendment on the November ballot in hopes to drive conservative voters, who might be a little less than excited about the Republican presidential nominee, to the polls on election day. Thompson's arguments in favor of the right-to-work legislation echo those seen in other states and the law mimics proposals put forth by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is pushing corporate-sponsored bills in numerous states in recent years.

He told KSTP that the bill would give workers the choice to join a union or not. In the event they decline, they don’t pay dues, he said. All unions, both public and private, would be affected, but collective bargaining rights would not be altered, he said.

Shar Knutson, who heads the state’s AFL-CIO, told MinnPost that she isn’t surprised by Thompson’s bill.

“What we saw today is identical to what we’ve seen in Ohio and Wisconsin,” she told MinnPost. “This is a national effort being pushed by corporate interests.”

As previously reported, the arguments that employees can be forced to join unions are false and the other arguments in favor of right-to-work laws are all bogus. The real agenda behind the laws is to weaken unions and to assault the rights of working families.

The conservative assault on the pensions of state workers is moving forward unabated in 2012, despite widespread information that the case against pensions is based on lies and twisted facts. The Wall Street Journal, among others, is making the claim that state employee pensions are too expensive and lavish and that in times of economic crisis, they have to be cut or eliminated in order to allow state budgets to be balanced.

The claim is obviously nonsense:

The typical AFSCME member — men and women who plow our streets, care for the sick, protect our children, clean our buildings and keep our communities safe — receives a pension of approximately $19,000 a year after a career of public service. The employees have earned and paid for these pensions. Employee contribution rates commonly amount to 3 percent to 10 percent of their paychecks. These contributions, combined with investment earnings, usually account for 75 percent or more of all pension benefit funding.

The economy’s collapse in 2008-2009 took its toll on everyone’s retirement savings. But our nation’s public pension systems, which were fully funded before the crash, continue their robust recovery earning their highest returns in decades in fiscal year 2011. Pensions continue to provide irreplaceable retirement security to millions of Americans who provide public services. Yet, the corporate-backed opponents of pensions are creating a myth that the system is falling apart and that state and local governments are going bankrupt because of the $19,000 pensions sanitation workers are earning.

That is simply not true. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the size of the projected state and local government pension funding shortfalls is manageable. In most states, the total shortfall for the pension funds is less than 0.2 percent of projected gross state product during the next 30 years. Even in states with the largest shortfalls, the gap is less than 0.5 percent of projected state product during that period. And, because pension payments are made over generations of workers, funding can remain stable over long periods, and funding challenges managed over decade long periods, despite short-term economic setbacks. These are facts that the opponents of public pensions simply ignore, as they seek to punish workers for Wall Street’s psychopathic behavior.

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Apple Inc.'s chief executive officer, Tim Cook bristled at suggestions that his company didn't care about the fate of workers in the Chinese factories that produce popular products like the iPad and iPhone. The comments came in the wake of New York Times reports of terrible work conditions in the factories.

Apple Inc.'s chief executive responded to a wave of negative attention to conditions at overseas factories that make its products, saying the insinuation that Apple doesn't care about the welfare of its workers is "offensive."

"Unfortunately, some people are questioning Apple’s values today," Tim Cook wrote in an e-mail to Apple employees. "Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern."

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"We will continue to dig deeper, and we will undoubtedly find more issues," Cook wrote. "What we will not do — and never have done — is stand still or turn a blind eye to problems in our supply chain. On this you have my word."

Foxconn is the actual company that runs the factories and has been the target of complaints in recent years. The Times reported on recent fatalities in one of Foxconn's factories:

The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws.

When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day.

Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.

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However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

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