Kenneth Quinnell

It's time once again to take a look at the ways working people are making progress in the states. Click on any of the links to follow the state federations on X (formerly Twitter).

Workers at the Barnes & Noble store at the Almaden Plaza Shopping Center in San Jose, California, voted 90% in favor of union representation with United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 5. The election concluded a monthslong campaign where workers overcame strong company opposition to join the growing number of unionized Barnes & Noble locations that include New York City; Brooklyn, New York; Hadley, Massachusetts; and Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Members of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) members at Washington Center in Virginia contributed generously to at-risk youth for the holidays. The members purchased several thousand dollars’ worth of toys in support of Loudoun Mobile Hope, a group that provides support and emergency shelter to young people up to age 24 who are at-risk, precariously housed or homeless. The organization empowers these young people to become self-sufficient and experience improved well-being. Mobile Hope’s toy drive, which supplements the Toys for Tots program, has a goal of collecting 10,000 toys this year for local children.

On Tuesday, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union-UFCW (RWDSU-UFCW) and the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), who are members of SEIU, joined incarcerated workers and local community partners to file a class-action lawsuit in response to the systemic exploitation and forced labor of Alabama’s incarcerated population. The suit, strongly supported by the AFL-CIO, outlines how the Alabama Department of Corrections denies Black Alabamians parole at twice the rate of their White counterparts in order to maintain a cheap labor force through wrongful detention. And though Black Alabamians are only a quarter of the state’s residents, they make up over 50% of the incarcerated population.