Whether Congress passes a weak health care bill this month or puts the debate out of its misery altogether, labor’s single-payer activists are showing no signs of slinking out of sight. . . .

March 4 witnessed an explosion of energy across California, as thousands demonstrated against the devastation of the state’s K-12 schools and vaunted public colleges, once the gateway to opportunity for the working class. . . .

It’s day 35 of the miners’ lockout in Boron, California, in the harsh desert of Kern County. . . .

For the past eight months, the 3,000 Steelworkers of my local have been on strike at Vale Inco’s nickel and copper mines in Ontario. Our rallying cry has been “Fair Deal Now.” We’re not bluffing: on March 12, we turned down the first offer we’ve received by 87 percent. . . .

Walkouts, student strikes, and marches shook every level of California’s embattled public education system March 4. And the action paused only briefly as activists savored short-term victories and set about planning the next wave of challenges to lawmakers and administrators. . . .

While construction workers are most likely to be labeled contractors, other industries are not immune. Court decisions socked FedEx with $14.4 million in fines in 2008. Thirty states are investigating misclassification at FedEx and the company faces at least 45 class action lawsuits—27,000 FedEx drivers could benefit. . . .

The “reinvention” of the “New GM” began with the opening of a lithium-ion battery plant in Brownstown, Michigan, near Detroit. The event not only signals GM’s return to electric vehicles—for the first time in about 30 years, GM has opened a non-union plant in the U.S. . . .

Labor’s campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) appears to have failed. It’s time for our movement to rethink a long-term strategy to change this country’s dysfunctional labor laws. . . .

The chambers of the legislature are a sea of red. Hundreds of Vermonters, many of them wearing the red T-shirts of the Healthcare Is a Human Right campaign, have driven in to attend a January hearing on universal, single-payer health care. . . .

Want to know what chutzpah means? Look no further than TV's newest reality show, “Undercover Boss.” Apparently the titans of industry aren't satisfied that they burned our economy to the ground and got nothing but a slap on the wrist from Washington. They want us to like them, too.

The Obama and Congressional versions of health insurance legislation—assuming that a bill will pass—will affect workers in ways both obvious and not so obvious. At the moment, House Democrats are making their last changes to a smaller “reconciliation” bill that they would vote on either at the same time they consider the Senate’s version or separately.

The bill’s final details aren’t yet known, especially on contentious issues dividing the chambers, such as abortion coverage.

Healthy unions should welcome workplace discontent. Stewards can turn discontent into campaigns that build workplace power. Sometimes, though, too much unproductive discontent is floating around. Maybe there’s a culture that supports bitching but no action; maybe there are tensions among co-workers that prevent cooperation.

Dole Food is trying to crush Filipino pineapple workers’ right to organize. Beyond facing stagnant real wages, high quotas, and up to a 72-hour work week with no overtime pay, workers and their families are exposed to toxic chemicals and not given proper safety equipment.

When individual Dole workers spoke out about chemical safety hazards, the company used its political weight to get them arrested for defamation. Even holding down their jobs has become more difficult for full-time workers, as up to three-quarters of the workforce is being replaced by contractors.

Twenty-one Bangladeshi garment workers were killed February 26 when a sweater factory caught fire. Another 20 workers were hospitalized for burns and other injuries following the blaze at a factory near Dhaka, the manufacturing center of Bangladesh.

As the fire spread, workers on the third and seventh floors were trapped, locked in for their own “security.” Eleven security guards, who had the keys, fled the scene. Poor ventilation, caused partly by storage of production materials on the roof, turned the sealed rooms into gas chambers.