His mother took three buses every morning to clean houses in the suburbs. His father worked every job he could find until he landed his first union contract at an aluminum mill on Chicago's southwest side. Then Fred Redmond's family started going to a doctor's office instead of the free clinic. That is why the labor movement is personal to him — and why he has given more than 50 years to it.

On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond joins for the first Friday with Fred of August as part of the Labor 132 series. He shares the story of his parents' journey from sharecropping in Mississippi to union membership in Chicago, reflects on his proudest moments with the United Steelworkers, including organizing rubber plantation workers in Liberia and surviving strikes at Reynolds and Alcoa, and explains why union popularity is now at its highest point in 70 years.

Visit aflcio.org and explore the AFL-CIO's labor history timeline.

Columbus just landed Electra's $850 million EL9 Ultra Short hybrid-electric aircraft manufacturing plant at AirPark Ohio, is building a $100 million early childhood learning center on a former jail site and generated 6.5 million union building trades work hours at Google facilities alone last year. And the American Federation of Labor was founded downtown in 1886.

On today's Trades Day episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, C/COBCTC Executive Secretary-Treasurer Dorsey Hager delivers his monthly update covering Intel's continued ramp-up, upcoming public hearings for two major gas-powered energy centers that will supply data center campuses in Fairfield County and Asheville, a new project labor agreement for the $100 million Franklin County early childhood learning center, the state of Ohio's data center conversation at the local government level and what happened when building trades members brought brick walls and concrete finishing to the Ohio State Fair.

Visit columbusconstruction.org for more.

The Screen Actors Guild was founded in 1933. AFTRA was founded around the same time. For nearly 80 years, they tried to become a single union and kept falling short of the 80% supermajority required by both constitutions. Then, in 2008, employers used the gap between them to restructure primetime scripted television in ways that stripped members of their health insurance. By 2012, the two unions were one.

On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast — part of the Labor 132 series — SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland tells the full story, from the very different founding cultures of SAG and AFTRA in the 1930s through the McCarthy era, Ronald Reagan's complicated labor legacy, the 2008 employer maneuver that finally made the cost of disunity impossible to ignore and what the merged union has built in the 14 years since. He also addresses the AI fight, now the most urgent focus of SAG-AFTRA's resources, and explains why the strength of the merged union is exactly what that fight requires.

Visit sagaftra.org for more.

He joined the laborers in 2014, has been sober since 2009 and spent years working in addiction treatment before the trades. Now he is one of three recovery specialists covering approximately 22 LIUNA locals and up to 12,000 members across Massachusetts through the LEAN program — Laborers Escaping Adversity Now — the first program of its kind in the Laborers union when it launched in 2018.

On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, Massachusetts Laborers' Benefits Fund recovery specialist Jonathan Ashwell discusses how the LEAN program works: cold outreach to members with substance use claims, presentations at every apprenticeship class, a hotline, vetted treatment access that gets members into care quickly and personal in-person follow-up a week after placement. He also addresses the construction industry's suicide crisis, LIUNA General President Brent Booker and General Secretary-Treasurer Michael F. Sabitoni's national push to reduce stigma and why the peer support model — a union brother who has lived the same life reaching out to another — is the most effective tool available.

If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988. Visit mlbf.org for more.

In 2003, the Teamsters celebrated their 100th anniversary and discovered they had almost no institutional record of their own history. Previous administrations had discarded materials that should have been preserved. That realization launched a 20-year effort that has now produced teamsterhistory.org — more than 27 unfiltered, unedited oral history interviews with the people who lived through one of the most turbulent and consequential periods in American labor history, from 1975 to 1999.

On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast — the first episode of Labor 132, presented by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association National Labor Office — Teamsters veterans Bret Caldwell and Brian Rainville discuss the launch of teamsterhistory.org, the history of the Teamsters Archives at George Washington University and an interview project that captured participants from across the full political spectrum, from TDU founder Ken Paff to General President James P. Hoffa, all in their own unedited words. General President O'Brien's decision to let the unflattering material stay in, Rainville said, is what made the whole thing possible.

Visit teamsterhistory.org to explore the interviews and download full transcripts.

Two conversations that cut to the heart of what workers and retirees are navigating right now — one about what happens when an employer decides union members are expendable, and one about finding the right healthcare coverage when the landscape keeps shifting.

The University of Maryland, College Park, laid off more than 80 workers earlier this summer. More than 80% were union members. The university's nearly billion-dollar endowment went untouched. So did the president's $1 million-plus annual salary and the multi-million-dollar coaching contracts for coaches with losing records. And almost immediately after the layoffs were announced, the university lifted its hiring freeze. AFSCME Local 1072 President Todd Holden, union steward Sarah Eppley and laid-off member Sarah Grun describe what happened, why the local filed 40 grievances covering workers laid off while on FMLA, pursuing grievances or active in union organizing and how to sign the AFSCME toolkit letter to the University System of Maryland at afscmemd.org.

Then, BCBS NLO Executive Director Merrilee Logue and BCBS Association Medicare market analyst Duncan Lawson discuss a Medicare Advantage landscape that has become more complicated for union retirees to navigate. For the second consecutive year, more than 2 million Medicare Advantage consumers had their plans terminated and even more saw their benefits reduced. Logue and Lawson explain which plans and regions have been most affected, why Medicare Advantage remains the most popular retiree coverage option despite the changes and what union members approaching 65 need to know to find coverage that fits — including how to work with a broker, check union fund coverage and take advantage of special enrollment periods.

Visit afscmemd.org for more on the AFSCME Local 1072 fight and bcbs.com/MedicareAdvantage for Medicare Advantage resources. Follow @BlueLabor on LinkedIn and X for updates from the BCBS National Labor Office.

She did not grow up thinking about roofing. She spent years in other work before deciding she wanted real pay, real benefits and a real career path. A woman she knew had gone through Hire360 and told her to look into it. She did. Now she is an apprentice with Roofers Local 11 in Chicago, and she is not going back.

On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, Donetta Thomas tells her story of entering the building trades through Hire360, the Chicago workforce development organization that connects women and people of color to union construction careers. She walks through what Hire360's pre-apprenticeship program actually does to prepare people for the trades, what life on a roof in Chicago really looks like and what she would say to any woman or person of color who is sitting on the fence about making the move.

Visit hire360chicago.com to learn more about Hire360 and rooferslocal11.org for more on Roofers Local 11.

Today's episode of the America's Work Force Union Podcast brings together two conversations that cut to the heart of what it means to be a worker in America right now — one focused on who keeps people safe and one on who makes the decisions that shape their lives.

First, National Nurses United President Jamie Brown and NNU Assistant Director of Health and Safety Jane Thomason discuss a workplace safety crisis that most Americans never see. Healthcare workers account for approximately 73% of all nonfatal workplace violence injuries in the United States, nurses are five times more likely to be assaulted at work than people in any other industry and the actual rate is dramatically higher because most incidents never get reported. Brown and Thomason make the case for the Nurse and Health Care Worker Protection Act, which would mandate safe staffing ratios and workplace violence prevention programs at hospitals receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding, and address chemical and environmental hazards nurses face daily, including antineoplastic drug exposure, post-COVID disinfectants and wildfire smoke entering hospital facilities through filtration systems not designed to stop it.

Then, IAM Union retired International President Tom Buffenbarger delivers his monthly independent labor voice segment covering three significant stories. Boeing's new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, is meeting directly with machinists, reinstating union advisory channels and committing to keep manufacturing in Puget Sound, representing what Buffenbarger calls the most meaningful cultural shift at the company in years. Tariff uncertainty, rather than tariff levels, is causing profitable companies to lay off manufacturing workers because the planning horizon has disappeared. And the One Big Beautiful Bill is structured to remove an estimated 11 to 12 million people from Medicaid through administrative burden and shift SNAP costs to states in ways that will reduce benefits for children, veterans and working families.

Visit nationalnursesunited.org for more from National Nurses United and goiam.org for more from the IAM Union.

The conventional wisdom says union contractors cost taxpayers more on public projects. A peer-reviewed study of 128 Sacramento County public works projects completed between 2018 and 2022 found the opposite: union contractors were associated with 5 to 6 percent lower costs and 14 to 22 percent faster completion times than non-union contractors.

On today's trades day episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, NorCal CIC Policy and Research Analyst Dr. Larissa Petrucci walks through how the study was built using California's publicly available certified payroll data and hundreds of public records requests, why the statistical methodology ensures the findings are genuinely about union contractor status rather than other variables and what building trades councils in other states can do right now to push for the data transparency that made this research possible.

Visit norcalcic.org for more.

Over one million federal workers lost collective bargaining rights by executive order. For the second year in a row, a union member in Congress has added bipartisan language to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act to start reversing that for 770,000 Department of Defense employees. And IFPTE just organized approximately 200 NOAA fisheries workers in Hawaii.

On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, IFPTE President Matt Biggs discusses the Norcross NDAA language and what happens next in the Senate reconciliation fight, why stripping DoD collective bargaining rights harms rather than protects national security, the SAVE Act's voter registration barriers and what the numbers on voter fraud actually show and an organizing surge producing more requests for union representation than IFPTE has organizers to handle.

Visit ifpte.org for more.