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21 immigrant meatpackers were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers January 24 at the Smithfield Foods plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina. The Tar Heel plant’s 5,000 workers have been fighting to organize a union since the early 1990’s. Pro-union workers have faced fierce employer opposition, including retaliatory firings, beatings, and harassment...

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Hundreds of meatpackers from the Smithfield Foods hog processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina honored Martin Luther King Jr. Day at a January 15 rally in nearby Fayetteville, where they lambasted the company for its refusal to give workers the holiday off. . . .

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Every year on Valentine’s Day, millions of Americans head to their local florist or supermarket to buy flowers for a friend, spouse, or family member. If there’s a romantic relationship involved, we’re mainly concerned about getting our gift to the recipient--on time. Few of us ever ask where all these flowers come from or who helped grow and pick them. . . .

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Heavily-armed federal agents stormed six Swift meatpacking plants last month and rounded up nearly 1,300 immigrant workers in one of the largest workplace raids in U.S. history. The raids represented the climax of a year in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ratcheted up its workplace operations. . . .

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Sanitation workers in Raleigh, North Carolina had had enough. For two days in September, they staged work stoppages for several hours each day, refusing to move their trucks off the garage lot. . . .

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In today’s labor movement, it’s hard to find a leader who doesn’t stress the need to organize new members. Judging by the size of their paychecks, however, some of labor’s top brass aren’t ready to put their money where their mouth is. According to data filed under the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), the number of union officials and staff earning high salaries has skyrocketed in recent years. . . .

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More than a year after their three-day strike, New York City’s subway and bus workers finally have a contract—the same one they rejected a year ago. Sharp differences over the contract were reflected in the December 2006 local election, where incumbent president Roger Toussaint was re-elected with less than 43 percent of total vote. . . .

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San Francisco has been a union town since the historic 1934 maritime strike of sailors and longshoremen which turned into a citywide general strike after two strikers were killed by police. The strikers’ slogan then was, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” Now, every July 5, “Bloody Thursday,” West Coast ports close from the Canadian to the Mexican border to commemorate the militant strike that forged the organized labor movement. But will San Francisco remain a union town? . . .

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IUE-CWA Local 201 Can unions train and mobilize tens of thousands of new member-activists on a large enough scale to take on labor’s greatest challenges? Backers of the Communication Workers’ (CWA) new “Stewards Army” plan think so. . . .

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Four local unions representing 3,000 Verizon workers in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire are waging grassroots campaign to block Verizon’s attempt to abandon its “low-value” landline customers in northern New England. . . .

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Railroad engineers and trainmen from two unions are building solidarity and union democracy on the rails. On January 1, Railroad Operating Crafts United (ROCU), a cross-union rail workers’ reform group, officially launched its campaign to unite the two unions: the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and the United Transportation Union (UTU). . . .

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If you’re an immigrant worker and a “troublemaker,” your boss might have a new way of getting you to quiet down. While “no-match letters” have been used for years to intimidate or fire immigrant workers, in recent months their use is on the rise. . . .

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Although lack of legal status does not technically prevent workers from exercising their right to organize a union, it does give employers the opportunity to threaten workers who do. The threat of a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement can help keep workers from organizing. . . .

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Although lack of legal status does not technically prevent workers from exercising their right to organize a union, it does give employers the opportunity to threaten workers who do. The threat of a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement can help keep workers from organizing.

Another threat is the Social Security Administration (SSA), which has recently become more aggressive in monitoring phony Social Security numbers. When the SSA notices an error on a Social Security account, it sends a “no-match” letter to the employer stating that an employee’s number doesn’t match the administration’s database.

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Two members of the Ethiopian Teachers Association (ETA) were beaten and detained in December and are being held incommunicado. Tilahun Ayalew, arrested December 29, and Anteneh Getnet, arrested December 14, do not have access to lawyers. The charges against them are unknown.

A third ETA member, Meqcha Mengistu, has been missing since December 15. He had been under constant surveillance since attending an ETA conference December 8 and 9, according to the global union federation Education International (EI).

Amnesty International has put out several action alerts on behalf of previously detained and tortured ETA members. Attacks ETA members have increased since the union and EI filed a complaint with the International Labor Organization (ILO). EI cited government suppression of union activities, including numerous arrests since 2005.

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Ninety-two workers were fired from their squid processing jobs in Santa Rosalía in Baja California Sur, Mexico by Korean multinational seafood corporation Hanjin.

The firings followed attempts to organize an independent union, the Independent Workers Union of the Maquiladora Industry in Baja California Sur (or SINTTIM). The union has filed a lawsuit against Hanjin for violating the Mexico’s federal labor laws.

Speaking of conditions in the squid-processing, one worker said: “Many of us are single mothers and we depend on the salary from our job, and the fishing industry is the only source of employment and the companies take advantage of that. They pay us two cents [U.S] to clean each pound of squid, we work 12-hour shifts, we don’t have clean water to drink, and we are victims of sexual harassment by the supervisors.”