Faced with a surge in guestworkers laboring in the fields, farmworker unions in the U.S. and Canada are crossing borders to organize them and to hold governments to account for programs that exploit workers.

Seventy thousand teachers in the Mexican state of Oaxaca struck, demanding better funding for their students. They oppose a scheme that will reward educators for teaching to the test, too, in the biggest actions since 2006.

Mexico’s drug war—with a total of 31,000 deaths since December 2006—has wreaked havoc on workers, their communities, and their workplaces. While the victims are principally drug dealers, police, and soldiers, others include farmers, factory workers, migrant workers, teachers, doctors, and reporters.

Grupo Mexico, the largest mining company in Mexico, has imposed a company union on workers at its Cananea copper mine in Sonora in northern Mexico. This comes just days after the Mexican government used helicopters, tear gas, and thousands of police to dislodge striking members of the Mexican Miners and Metal Workers Union from the mine.