Hotel housekeepers are on a seven-city tour with a gigantic “hope quilt” that memorializes injuries on the job. It's also a symbol of their determination to rally union and non-union hotel housekeepers against harsh working conditions and workplace injuries.

Over the weekend Federal Police seized the plants of the Central Light and Power Company of Mexico, which provides electricity to Mexico City and several states in central Mexico.

After two years of delay, farmworkers in Florida will finally start getting a penny more per pound for tomatoes they pick.

Governor Luis Fortuño announced in late September that nearly 17,000 public employees in Puerto Rico will lose their jobs by November, in addition to the nearly 8,000 laid off over the summer.

A summit meeting of the Group of 20 in Pittsburgh last week was faced with an outpouring of challenges from social movement activists, community groups, and unions.

The Mexican Preventive Police are preparing to occupy the facilities of the Central Light and Power Company in Mexico City in an attempt to break the militant Mexican Electrical Workers Union.

When President Obama laid out a plan to reshape public education this summer, he wasn’t subtle with his symbolism: he was introduced by an eighth-grader from a charter school. Soon after, teachers nationwide met in Los Angeles.

Rank-and-file reformers in the East Coast Longshoremen’s (ILA) union have had a busy summer. The Longshore Workers Coalition (LWC) exposed secret contract negotiations and channeled member outrage against the deal, deepening a rift among top leaders.

A coalition of unions, faculty, and students gave a sharp rebuke to cuts and corporate giveaways at the renowned University of California system on September 24—the first day back for most UC campuses.

Miners in northern Ontario have been striking since July, standing against demands from a mining colossus to end defined-benefit pensions and to ax profit-sharing. The bottom line for members is ensuring that the company doesn’t cut the workforce into different tiers.

The media reports of New Yorkers coming together are certainly true, and in some ways this has been a really inspirational time. I was lucky enough to volunteer both Wednesday and Thursday nights.

After a friend and I waited on line for over an hour at the Javitz Center, we arrived at the volunteer registration table just as my declaration of “good communication and people skills” came in handy. (I’d been so regretting that I couldn’t put a check mark next to “welder” or “medic.”)

Workers in defined-benefit pension plans used to be one-third of the private sector. Now they are a sixth—and those 20 million workers’ security is under serious threat.

Consider the Central States Pension Fund. Once an anchor of retirement security for Teamsters in 29 states from Minnesota to Florida, the fund lost nearly a third of its assets during last year’s market meltdown. This only made an uncomfortable balancing act more precarious.

The economic crisis has left 47 states in the red, with a combined deficit of $350 billion over the next two years. Pension benefits have been a highly visible target, pitting taxpayers against public workers in state and local governments.

These struggles will only intensify, as swooning stock prices have left nearly two-thirds of all state and local government pension funds at least 20 percent shy of what they need to cover retirees.

Nobody wants to admit it, but the next casualty of the Wall Street meltdown will probably be your golden years. For years corporations have been trying to choke the life out of traditional pensions, working hard to get out from under the risk—and the cost—of providing for their retirees. Between last year’s credit crunch and changes to federal pension laws, they may get their wish.

The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) has asked for international solidarity in resisting the government liquidation of their company, the termination of the workers, and thus the destruction of the union.

With the Massachusetts jobless rate now at 9.1 percent and rising, workers are increasingly frustrated by employers exploiting the recession to attack them, and the failure of politicians and policy makers to address the growing jobs crisis.