On December 14, more than 300 nursing home workers in Springfield voted to form a union. They work for Sullivan and Associates Corporation. The voted workers voted 190 to 94 to join the Service Employees union www.seiu509.org Two dozen workers' votes are being disputed by the company or the union.

Union workers in the U.S. make more money than nonunion workers, 29 percent more. That’s $9,300 a year extra for the average worker who joins a union. For Latino workers, the union advantage is 50 percent; for black workers, 31 percent.

There will be a rally at the Chicopee, Massachusetts Rite Aid store at 5 Saint James Avenue at 3 p.m. on December 15. Chicopee is near Springfield. The public is welcome to attend. At the rally, Rite Aid customers will learn from volunteers about:

-- Rite Aid's decision to hike its CEO's compensation to $4.5 million per year;

-- The company's effort to impose major cost increases on workers for health insurance;

-- Rite Aid's pattern of delays in reaching fair agreements with its union workers, and;

On October 22 at noon there will be a march to the Springfield police department to protest police brutality in Springfield. That day there will also be a conference on how to fix a variety of problems with police. The conference will be from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. at the Basilica of the Holy Apostle at 339 State Street in Springfield. The march and conference are being organized by the Community Coalition for Justice.

There will be a march in Springfield at 4 p.m. on September 15 calling on Congress to raise taxes on the rich to create jobs for unemployed people. The jobs would include work building better trains and train tracks, making homes and other building more energy efficient, and installing solar panels and windmills.

Organizers are asking the public to meet at 1550 Main Street at 3:45 p.m. Putting the millions of jobless Americans to work would raise wages for workers who already have jobs because employers would be forced to compete for skilled workers.

On July 19 at 2:30 p.m., Northampton nursing home workers will hold a rally for justice. The workers are asking the public to attend. The rally will be at 737 Bridge Road. Directions are at www.maps.google.com

Recent budget decisions by the governors and state legislators in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont have caused a crisis here in the Valley for people with mental illness who don’t have good health insurance. That’s according to Paul Gorman. He’s president of the New Hampshire chapter of a national group, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Gorman is also director of the Dartmouth College Psychiatric Research Center www.dartmouth.edu He spoke with the Valley Post on July 13.

Four Valley residents were found not guilty of “unlawful assembly” in a Washington, DC court room on June 16. They were arrested with 21 other people for protesting torture at the U.S. capitol building in January.

Judge Russell Canan freed the arrested protesters.

The non-violent protest was organized by the group Witness Against Torture www.witnesstorture.org

Some three dozen Vermonters were on “lock down” at a private prison in Tennessee on May 14 for non-violent civil disobedience on May 12. A prison official refused to tell the Associated Press when the prisoners would be allowed to make phone calls and have their other rights restored, for example, the right to exercise outside their cells. Guards used a "non-lethal grenade" to force the prisoners into their cells.

On May 8, workers stood outside a Shaw's supermarket near Brattleboro and asked people not to shop at Shaw's until a strike is settled. Many customers said they would do what the workers asked. Some 300 workers at a Shaw's warehouse near Boston have been on strike for weeks. Shaw's is using the Keene-based C&S corporation to scab. C&S has warehouses in Brattleboro and near Northampton. The May 8 action, and recent pickets at the C&S warehouses in the Valley, were organized by the Massachusetts and Vermont chapters of www.jwj.org

Gael Wakefield is a public transit bus driver in Greenfield. In 2008, she was elected president of Local 274 of the UE union. She still serves as president, while also working as a bus driver. The UE’s web site is www.UEunion.org

On May 5, Wakefield sat down with Eesha Williams of MassLaborNews.com to talk about her union.