What makes the union movement go and grow? It's the rank-and-file men and women who not only go to work every day, where they use their first-rate skills to perform top-flight, quality work, but who also go that extra mile.

It may be spending hours after work or in the early mornings helping other workers win justice and a voice at work in an organizing drive. Maybe it's giving up Saturday mornings to mobilize union families to get out the vote in labor walks or leading efforts to improve neighborhoods and communities.

These union members make up the Heart of the Movement. Debby Zabarenko and Sheila Perez are among them—and the two latest additions to union members we feature in the Heart of the Movement section on our website.

Zabarenko first joined The Newspaper Guild-CWA 27 years ago when she began her journalism career at the Associated Press. Today, she is the environment correspondent for the Reuters news service and covers a host of stories ranging from climate change to environmental political activists.

Up and down the West Coast today, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) are commemorating the 74th anniversary of "Bloody Thursday."

On July 5, 1934, San Francisco police, backed up by the National Guard, opened fire on a group of 2,000 dockworkers, sailors and other maritime workers, killing two and wounding scores of others.

The longshore workers had struck San Francisco and other West Coast ports May 9. They demanded recognition of their union and the ouster of a company union—one that controlled who got work, who didn’t, what workers were paid and what meager benefits, if any, they received for their backbreaking and dangerous work in cargo holds and on the docks. Other maritime workers joined them in solidarity.

This July 4, there will be lots of speeches about freedom and patriotism. Politicians will talk about the nation's struggle for independence and how we must fight to defend what we have achieved. But especially since the terrorist attacks in 2001, such talk has defined patriotism as fighting terrorism and standing up for the flag—yet it goes no further.

But it should.

Among those in the country embodying patriotism are the women and men who make up our nation's unions.

Union members demonstrate their patriotism by taking on the most fundamental of roles: Defending our nation. Thousands of union members have joined the National Guard and the military. Union members—firefighters, police, medical technicians—were the first to respond on Sept. 11, and hundreds more risked their lives to help recover bodies from the rubble. These union members put their lives on the line on Sept. 11—as they do every day.

Flight Attendants Face High-Pressure Cabins : Growing Nightmare For Airline Workers
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92222458
BUSINESS
Flight Attendants Face High-Pressure Cabins
by Frank Langfitt
Audio for this story will be available at approx. 9:00 a.m. ET
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Frank Langfitt/NPR
Erin Gailey has flown for Alaska Airlines for 25 years. She says the job of a flight attendant has changed dramatically.
Morning Edition, July 7, 2008 ·Flight attendants have one of the tougher jobs in America these days. Airline companies are reeling from high oil prices, and new baggage fees are annoying more customers. Caught in the middle is the flight attendant, the public face of an industry that's on the ropes.
When Stefannee Steffenhagen started working for Air Wisconsin — a US Airways commuter service — several years ago, she thought it was the beginning of what she called "that little-girl dream."
But the reality of the job doesn't quite measure up. In her brief career, Steffenhagen has seen a lot of change.
Today, she has fewer amenities to offer passengers, and they're increasingly angry about it. She says one of her toughest jobs is just getting women to put their purses in the overhead compartment.

http://www.itfglobal.org/news-online/index.cfm/newsdetail/2304
News online
ITF lends backing to US dockers’ contract negotiations
2 July 2008
The ITF has announced its support for a US dockers’ union during crucial contract negotiations with its employer.
The ITF, which is closely monitoring negotiations between the ITF-affiliated International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the employer organisation, the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), expressed its commitment to back the union at a recent Dockers’ Section conference in Stockholm, Sweden. The union’s current employment contract expired on 1 July.
Conference delegates unanimously passed a resolution pledging international solidarity. It also called on the PMA and its member companies to exhaust all negotiations options in good faith with the ILWU in order to avoid a conflict similar to the one that occurred in 2002. During the contract dispute that took place then, 25,000 workers were locked out by their employers.
The ILWU has announced that dockworkers will continue to load and unload cargo to keep ports operating while negotiations are underway and pledged to work hard to reach a fair and reasonable agreement. The union’s key contract issues include: good jobs that support working families; safer work with fewer injuries and deaths; cleaner air for workers on the docks and families in nearby communities as well as health and retirement benefits protection.

Barack Obama is the only candidate in the presidential race who is on the side of working people, and we must defeat attempts to divide workers by race and put him in the White House, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka says.

Speaking to the United Steelworkers’ (USW) convention in Las Vegas this week, Trumka said:

George W. Bush's solution to our nation's economic mess—that his failed policies helped create—is to applaud people who must work three jobs to make ends meet.

Sen. John McCain colors his solution to working families' financial struggles with similar crayons: He encourages us to make a living selling stuff on eBay. As reported on Bloomberg: