UPTE-CWA President Dan Russell discusses organizing 2,100 UC tech workers into the largest tech bargaining unit in the country and why getting organized before a mass AI rollout is the union’s most pressing next step. Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper covers AFT’s Devices Down, Eyes Up school technology vision, Ohio’s billion-dollar voucher accountability fight and five first contract victories — including the first KIPP charter school contract in the country — with a confident update on the Columbus Metropolitan Library election now underway.

Iron Workers Local 44 Business Manager Dave Baker discusses the Brent Spence Bridge companion project finally breaking ground this week after decades of funding gridlock, crediting a bipartisan Senate push and cross-aisle governor cooperation for getting it done. He describes what 6 million building trades work hours, 1,200 peak construction jobs and a more-than-doubled apprenticeship applicant pool mean for Local 44 and the Cincinnati trades community — and shares his own journey from non-union metal building work to a union career that has his retirement fully prepared.

Union attorney and Brooklyn Law adjunct professor Andrew Strom breaks down a Sixth Circuit ruling that denied the NLRB a preliminary injunction in a case where a Michigan hospital illegally withdrew union recognition while workers voted 89 to 66 to keep it. He explains the NLRA’s four-year enforcement gap, the unequal standard applied to workers versus employers seeking injunctions and why he believes the class backgrounds of Trump-appointed federal judges are as much a factor in these rulings as explicit ideology.

Ironworkers Local 48 President and congressional candidate Trey Martin discusses his decision to run for U.S. Congress in Oklahoma, driven by a personal healthcare crisis that nearly bankrupted his family despite union coverage. He describes a platform built around wages, healthcare affordability, public school funding and ending congressional stock trading — and explains why he believes working-class issues resonate with voters across party lines heading into Tuesday’s primary.

Teamsters Local 175 Secretary-Treasurer Luke Farley describes a four-week strike against Beverage Market, a profitable MillerCoors distributor in West Virginia, demanding wage cuts, retirement rollbacks and health insurance premium increases of up to 880% with no financial justification. All 49 members voted unanimously to strike and are maintaining 24-hour picket lines with strong community support and full Teamsters International backing — heading into Fourth of July weekend with shelves emptying across the company’s half-state territory.

CWA District 4 Administrative Director Frank Mathews discusses a new AT&T Mobility contract ratified by 9,000 workers, a double overtime bill unveiled at the CWA legislative conference, the Raise the Wage Act’s case for a $17 federal minimum wage and the Worker Power Agenda built from responses by more than 9,000 members — all carried directly to Capitol Hill by thousands of CWA members who congressional offices said arrived better prepared than virtually any other group that week.

SMART Transportation Division National Safety and Legislative Director Jared Cassity breaks down the Rail Safety Act amendment adopted by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, explains in detail how silenced defect detectors directly caused the East Palestine derailment and outlines the path to law before the September 30 surface transportation authorization deadline. With more than 1,000 major derailments annually and East Palestine-level catastrophe averted only by luck, Cassity said the time for meaningful legislation is now.

LaborLab founder Bob Funk breaks down a new EPI report finding US employers spend $1.7 billion annually on union avoidance — and explains why the real number is almost certainly higher. From Amazon’s $26.6 million in consultant spending to the law firms handling 19% of all NLRB cases in the shadows, Funk maps the full infrastructure of union busting and explains how LaborLab’s Persuader reports can put the information workers are legally entitled to directly in their hands during an organizing campaign.

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond discusses new data showing worker share of Gross National Income at a record low while corporate profits hit an 80-year high, the defeat of a federal AI provision that would have blocked state worker protections for a decade and what the AFL-CIO is bringing to its Minneapolis convention — including a story about a movement organizing at record rates and preparing to fight hard into the midterms.

Dorsey Hager, executive secretary-treasurer of the Columbus Central Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council, breaks down Governor DeWine’s surprise suspension of Ohio’s data center sales tax exemption, delivers an encouraging Intel project update and discusses record apprenticeship applications across central Ohio’s building trades Locals. With 20 million work hours projected for 2026 and close to 4,000 tradespeople expected on the Intel site by the end of next year, the Silicon Heartland is booming — and Hager wants to make sure nothing gets in the way of keeping it that way.