The School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University today released a report that demonstrates how Project Labor Agreements are helping to create middle-class careers in the U.S. construction industry.  Among the key findings are that 97% of the 185 PLAs examined incorporated "community workforce provisions" which are specifically designed to create pathways to jobs and career training for women, minorities, and military veterans.

The state’s largest union, the 400,000-member Massachusetts AFL-CIO, today elected State Senator Steven A. Tolman president on the opening day of its 54th annual constitutional convention.

A start-up solar energy company, EPG Solar, has outlined plans to build a 12,000-panel solar array on a 30-acre parcel of the 184-acre site.

Source: Worcester Telegram & Gazette (10/5/11)

More than ever, unions are under attack. The far right has convinced many that union members are lazy, violent, uneducated, greedy and stooges of the Democratic Party. This attitude is shameful, because unions helped build our nation.

Source: Worcester Telegram & Gazette (9/11/11)

Legislative leaders yesterday released a new bill to license three destination resort casinos, including one in Southeast Massachusetts for a Native American tribe, and a single, competitively bid slot machine parlor license.

Source: Worcester Telegram & Gazette (8/24/11)
 

There are three new Tentative Interim Amendments (TIAs) that are currently being balloted through the National Electrical Code® code-making panels. While the panels are reviewing them, these TIAs are also available for public review and comment.

Source: NEC Plus

Although it has been over two months since several tornadoes caused devastation to approximately 20 communities in Western and Central Massachusetts, there still remains substantial clean-up work to be done.  Beyond taking four lives and serious injuries to about 80, these tornadoes have left several communities looking like a war zone with complete destruction and loss of many homes and trees, along with dismantled and dislocated cars, sheds, barns, and personal property.

New York City said it will proceed with $6 billion in infrastructure updates after a federal judge preserved its project labor agreements with an organization representing some 50 local unions.

Source: Courthouse News Service (8/9/11)

Hoping for the city to get the most megawatts for the buck, Mayor Mark P. Hawke said the city and the Gardner Redevelopment Authority are weighing whether to substitute a solar array for a wind turbine planned at Summit Industrial Park.

Source: Worcester Telegram & Gazette  (8/3/11)
 

Any shop steward will tell you that protecting workers’ rights on the job is both a mental and physical endeavor.

But those challenges were gradually magnified over the past decade for Middleton, Mass., Local 2321 member and former steward Lorraine Jasukonis, when a still-undiagnosed impairment began impeding her ability to walk. During that time, she became less able to perform operator services and dispatch duties at Verizon shops in the Bay State until her retirement in June 2009.