You take your kid to the dentist and go to pay the $20 co-pay. “Oh, no,” says the receptionist. “You have to pay the whole bill—you don't have insurance.” That’s how a member of Teamsters Local 743 in Chicago found out that his employer, SK Hand Tools, had unilaterally and without notice cancelled health insurance for the workforce.

Summer will last a little longer at Oakland University, outside of Detroit, as faculty took to the picket line last week, challenging the school administration and building student solidarity.

CWA Local 1298, which represents AT&T telecommunications workers in Connecticut, protested CEO Randall Stephenson as he made a presentation at a Goldman Sachs event on Wall Street Thursday. More than 4,000 CWA members in Connecticut have been without a contract since April.

Two months after returning to their jobs on the heels of a victorious 11-month strike against deep concession demands, the defiant workers at the Bronx-based Stella D’oro Biscuit Co. are at it again. This time, however, they are not walking out of their plant—they are trying to stay in it.

In the early hours of the morning on June 28, the Honduran military shot off the locks on the back entrance to President Manuel Zelaya’s home in Tegucigalpa, dragged him out of bed, and whisked him out of the country in his pajamas.

When the Labor Department announced that a quarter million jobs were lost in July, the news was greeted with cheers and backslapping on Wall Street. One week later the Federal Reserve declared we were on our way out of the recession.

Delegates to the United Auto Workers’ national Ford Council opposed reopening their contract in early August to make more concessions. Ford made a $2.3 billion profit in the second quarter of 2009, though the company attributes that to debt swaps and one-off cuts.

A delegation of U.S. food service workers flew to the Paris headquarters of their employer Sodexo last winter, delivering petitions against the company’s anti-union practices. They also took to the streets, joining the French general strike.

We are willing to bet that a larger proportion of Labor Notes readers marched on Solidarity Day than of any other publication in America. But for those of you who couldn’t go, here’s an idea of what it was like.

When New York state made national news two years ago with a flap about driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants, the state AFL-CIO supported the immigrants but wasn't out in front. Neither was another supporter, the Catholic Church.

But as chair of the Albany/Capital District chapter of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), I was getting media calls every other day. We were it.