BOSTON/Downtown Crossing - Over 200 people attended a protest picket outside the Hyatt Regency Boston hotel on Thurs. July 22nd to demand that the Hyatt Corporation reinstate the jobs of 98 former members of their housekeeping staff. The event was part of a nationwide day of protest by the UNITE HERE hotel workers union. Similar protests were held in several other cities.

BOSTON/State House – Supporters and opponents of a proposed Senate bill that would allow 3 resort-style casinos in Massachusetts packed a Senate Ways and Means Committee hearing at the 600-seat Gardner Auditorium on Tuesday, June 8th, and listened to hours of testimony from both perspectives.

Coming on the heels of a House casino bill passed in April, which calls for 2 casinos and slot machines at the racetracks, the hearing gave advocates on both sides of the debate a chance to present their testimony before a final vote.

BOSTON/Back Bay - Completing a 5-day, 60-mile march, striking workers from the Shaw's Distribution Center in Methuen, Mass. and their supporters arrived at the Shaw's supermarket at the Prudential Center for a picket and rally on Thursday. Over 100 people gathered in front of 2 entrances to the store for about an hour - demanding that Shaw's management on-site come out and talk to them, and telling passers-by to boycott the chain.

According to United Food and Commercial Workers Local 791, the labor union representing workers at the Methuen distribution center, Shaw's cut off health coverage for over 300 of their members on April 1st - 3 weeks into a strike over Shaw's insistence that the workers "bear all the burden of increasing health care costs." The union states that "many of the workers have spouses or young children with serious medical conditions."

Cambridge, MA - About 80 people rallied outside the Holyoke Center administration building at Harvard University early Thursday evening in support for the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers. The group gathered to protest the recent announcement of five more union employees losing their jobs at the Sackler Museum at the end of June. The rally also expressed outrage at the continued layoff trend, highlighting the loss of over 340 union jobs since last year, last spring’s forced early-retirement offers and the hiring of temporary employees. It was the latest demonstration in the ongoing No Layoffs Campaign at Harvard.

Members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) are stepping up a campaign against the proposed sale of telephone lines in 14 states by telecom industry giant Verizon to the much smaller, mostl

BOSTON – Since the creation of the Transportation Security Administration – following the attacks of September 11, 2001 – unionists have been trying to organize TSA workers; something the Bush administration and their Republican allies in Congress vigorously opposed.

BOSTON - On Tuesday, a delegation labor unionists and community activists delivered a letter to the Mexican Deputy Consul General rebuking Mexican President Felipe Calderón for his government's seizure of Central Light and Power plants, decertification of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union and firing of between 44,000 and 45,000 union workers.

BOSTON/Downtown Crossing - Lucine Williams wants her old job back.

“If I was given back my job [I would go back to work for Hyatt,] that’s why we’re all standing out here.”

“Out here” is next to a makeshift stage, erected by members of UNITE HERE Local 26 in front of the Boston Hyatt Regency Hotel on a chilly evening earlier this month.

“May the eyes of the Hyatt management be opened and may their hearts be softened,” intoned Rabbi Barbara Pensner of Temple Hillel B’nai Torah in West Roxbury. “May they recognize they’ve made an error in judgment. May they repent the cruelty and immorality of their acts and may they open their doors to welcome these women [and men] back into their jobs again.”

BOSTON/Boston Common and other locations in downtown Boston - Over 1000 people - primarily members of dozens of area unions and allied community organizations - participated in a "Rally for Jobs" last Thursday around downtown Boston. The goal of the public action, according to organizers from the state's main labor federation Mass. AFL-CIO and the labor-community coalition Jobs with Justice, was to "fight against a jobless recovery and demand an economy that works for everyone." The event started with a rally on Boston Common followed by a march to another rally in front of Verizon headquarters in Post Office Square and concluded with another march to the Hyatt Regency hotel near Chinatown where the marchers met up with over 200 members of the UNITEHERE hotel workers union for a boisterous protest against Hyatt Corporation's recent firing of 100 longtime employees who were immediately replaced with contract workers.

The figures are staggering. Unemployment is at 9.1 percent and new unemployment claims continue to increase. By one measure, real unemployment and underemployment are double the official rate.