Research assistants at the University of Michigan are finding their battle to unionize caught up in the larger fight over public sector workers’ right to bargain.

Caterpillar announced Friday it would close its London, Ontario, locomotive plant after 465 workers there refused to grant concessions that would cut their wages in half. Cat will ship the jobs to a non-union plant in Indiana.

As Indiana becomes the nation’s 23rd right-to-work state, unionists and Occupiers are considering what actions to take as the nation’s attention focuses on the NFL championship in Indianapolis.

As three unions at the Kaiser health care chain in California pulled a one-day statewide walkout yesterday, their solidarity went unmatched by the company’s largest union, the Service Employees.

Connecticut nursing home workers are making it personal for a scofflaw employer who’s locked them out of their jobs, seeking big takeaways. Members of Service Employees 1199 protested at the "institute for justice" their boss founded.

The Longshore Workers released Friday some facets of its settlement with grain exporter EGT in Longview, Washington. After a card check, the union expects to negotiate a contract.

President Obama blew a kiss to Apple in his State of the Union speech. The timing couldn’t be weirder: Reports on its abysmal factory conditions in China are rampant, causing Apple to partner with Nike's favorite monitoring group. Is that a step forward?

Toronto’s mayor wants to privatize a raft of city services and to clear the way, he's taking on the largest public sector locals in Canada. Counting down to what looks like a lockout February 5, unions are scrambling to make their case to city residents.

Conflict is looming over a grain exporter's attempt to use scab labor to load a freighter in Longview, Washington. Occupiers and Longshore unionists vow to protest and expect a heavily armed police presence. Their own friction is adding difficulties, however.

Cablevision's Brooklyn technicians will lead a Martin Luther King Day march with the Reverend Al Sharpton to protest the company's racial disparities and prepare for a January 26 union election vote.

Wrenching testimonies from laid-off workers are overflowing the internet, crying out from the pages of policy reports, and popping up in commercial media. But unions are still grappling with how to organize the unemployed, including their own ex-members, into a political force.

“They issued an ultimatum, I wouldn’t call it bargaining,” said union negotiator Bob Orr. Caterpillar, despite $4.9 billion in profits, is trying to force 50 percent wage cuts by locking out 465 skilled locomotive builders.

Two million homecare workers are finally getting a little respect under U.S. labor law. New Labor Department rules would extend overtime and minimum wage protections to home health aides and personal care assistants in the 29 states that don’t already cover them.

On December 19 Oregonians occupied post offices that were slated to close in 17 rural communities. Carrying Christmas cards, cookies, and gifts of appreciation for postal workers, the occupiers collected signatures on petitions to Congress to change the laws that caused the Postal Service’s $8.5 billion budget deficit.

After seeing hundreds of thousands of people demonstrate in Wisconsin and Ohio to defend collective bargaining, it seems odd to read in Labor Notes that union contracts are “a trap” that “hold unions back.”

Stanley Aronowitz’s January 2012 Viewpoint said, “Labor is confined by contract unionism, whose core is the no-strike clause.”

Wisconsin public workers face harsher work rules and shrinking paychecks as contracts expire and additional provisions of Governor Scott Walker’s anti-union bill set in. State unions are being forced to shift from a decades-old servicing model to an organizing model in a fight for their survival.

Social media are presenting new challenges for unions as employers develop policies and discipline employees for their posts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

But whether workers are talking to each other in the lunch room or online, labor law still provides protections for private-sector workers to engage in concerted activities with their co-workers.