Penny Pritzker is President Obama’s nominee to be the next secretary of commerce. She is also a longtime member of the board of directors of the Hyatt hotel chain and heir to the Hyatt fortune. But her nearly decade-long record on the board, says UNITE HERE President D. Taylor, shows why the U.S. Senate should not confirm her. In a letter to Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), Taylor writes: 

Under her leadership, Hyatt has exhibited a broad pattern of labor abuses, including aggressive outsourcing, low wages and the mistreatment of housekeepers. Together these practices single out Hyatt as the worst hotel employer in the United States.

Homeowners supported by the Home Defenders League (HDL) and Occupy Our Homes participated in a third day of protest Wednesday, this time at the law firm Covington & Burling, which represents several major U.S. banks and is the former workplace of Attorney General Eric Holder, a key target of the week's protests. Eight more protesters were arrested, bringing the total for the three days to 34. A message on the HDL Facebook page Thursday said that all of those arrested were released and will not face charges stemming from the protests.

The fight over President Obama’s five nominees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is headed to the U.S. Senate floor after the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee voted today to send the five to the full Senate. Now the question is, will Senate Republicans filibuster?

Carmen Castillo is a UNITE HERE union steward, immigrant and 19-year veteran hotel housekeeper. In November 2011, the single mother of three from the Dominican Republic won election to the Providence, R.I., City Council. Since then filmmaker Margo Guernsey and her crew have been following Castillo at home, work, on the council and in the community.

Over the weekend, young people watched or read about President Obama speaking at Morehouse College and first lady Michelle Obama addressing the graduates of Bowie State University. Hopefully they were inspired by seeing so many young and gifted people finishing the course they chose to follow. Well, here is a little known set of facts. 

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released the following statement in response to the Senate Judiciary Committee's immigration bill: 

Today brings to mind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s wise and hopeful words, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” More than 11 million aspiring Americans took a big step toward becoming citizens today with the bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee vote. That reflects an enormous step toward healing an injustice, the deportation crisis that has wrecked families, communities and workplaces for far too long.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is appearing before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations today to answer charges that his company has avoided paying billions of dollars in taxes through the use of overseas tax shelters and loopholes in the corporate tax code. An investigation by the subcommittee found that Apple has shifted tens of billions of dollars of two subsidiaries in Ireland, while claiming that neither subsidiary is a tax resident of any country.

Organizers from the Home Defenders League, Occupy Our Homes and allied organizations estimate that more than 500 people attended a rally at the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday, calling for Attorney General Eric Holder to begin arresting bankers accused of fraud and unscrupulous lending practices. As of Tuesday morning, at least 27 demonstrators had been arrested after an attempt to enter the Justice Department building was prevented by law enforcement.

Wilma Liebman who served 14 years on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—including chairwoman from 2009–2011—says, “Appointments to the NLRB have been a political battleground for decades.” But, in a column today in Politico, she says the current attack on the NLRB is the most vicious since the board was created in the 1930s.

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) has offered a series of amendments to the commonsense immigration bill (S. 744), currently under consideration in the U.S. Senate, designed to fix what many see as flaws in the bill that weaken families. If approved, the amendments would make the bill more focused on keeping families intact, long an important principle in the U.S. immigration system. More than 200 organizations signed a letter in support of the amendments.