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Fallen Workers Honored

Mike Florio, Western MassCOSH, and Nancy Foley, Alliance for Injured Workers
Mike Florio, Western MassCOSH, and Nancy Foley, Alliance for Injured Workers

On Friday, April 23rd, about 40 participants came together to listen to the reading of the 66 names of workers in Massachusetts who died on the job in 2009 and early 2010 at the annual Worker's Memorial Day ceremony in Springfield, MA.

View photos from the event.

Pioneer Valley AFL-CIO Holds 2010 Education Conference

Attendees at the 2010 Education Conference in Springfield
Attendees at the 2010 Education Conference in Springfield

The Pioneer Valley AFL-CIO held its 2010 education conference yesterday at the Teamster Local 404 union hall. The conference featured several speakers and presentations designed to outline strategies to help the labor movement through the troubled times it and the rest of the economy finds itself in.

View photos from the conference.

 

President Brown's Letter to the Editor on Casinos Appears in the Republican

"We are in the midst of a blue-collar recession. More than half of the adults residing in Western Massachusetts do not have a four-year college degree and there are not near enough good jobs for them.

We now have an opportunity to put thousands of construction workers back to work while creating thousands of good jobs with benefits."

Tell Bank of America to "Pay Up!"

Volunteers got the word out to passerbys about Bank of America in downtown Springfield.
Volunteers got the word out to passerbys about Bank of America in downtown Springfield.

Despite almost crashing the entire global economic system, Wall Street executives gave executives $145 billion in bonuses last year. To help raise awareness about executives, the AFL-CIO organized workers across the nation on March 31st to target America's largest bank, Bank of America, with assets of over $1 trillion.

New Video of C&S Picket Posted

See video
Click to watch

Steve Dondley, Recording Secretary for the Pioneer Valley AFL-CIO, released a second video of the C&S picket in Hatfield, MA last Friday. The video, with some heavy inspiration from the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," shows three truckers who had interesting responses to the picket line.

The video shows how a picket is used to try to shame workers into doing the right thing and not cross the line. "There's often a lot of drama and tension on the picket line," Dondley said, "I hope the video captured some of that. I added a little twist of humor to boot which I hope helps some of the strikers who see it to relieve a little stress."

Click the video to watch.

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Our Mission

We are the working men and women of the Pioneer Valley. We stand together with anyone committed to our mission to achieve social justice and improve the quality of life for everyone living here.

We accomplish our mission by organizing ourselves and with others to gain a stronger, more powerful voice on the job and in the community. By uniting to offset the clout of the well-connected, by fighting together to secure livelihoods that provide us with dignity and respect, and by pooling our resources to further our collective action, we can reach our common goal of building the Pioneer Valley into a community that allows each of us to reach our full potential.