The Ground Zero cleanup at the site of the World Trade Center is completed 3 months ahead of schedule due to the heroic efforts of more than 3,000 building tradesmen & women who had worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for the previous 8 months – 2002

U.S. Supreme Court rules that undocumented workers do not have the same rights as Americans when they are wrongly fired - 2002

The Wall Street Journal begins a series alleging insider stock deals at the union-owned Union Labor Life Insurance Co. (ULLICO). After three years a settlement was reached with Robert Georgine, a building trades leader serving as ULLICO president and CEO, requiring him to repay about $2.6 million in profits from the sale of ULLICO stock, forfeit $10 million in compensation and make other payments worth about $4.4 million. All but 2 of the company’s directors were said to have profited from the deals - 2002

Union and student pressure forces Harvard university to adopt new labor policies raising wages for lowest-paid workers - 2002

Ford Motor Co. announces it will eliminate 35,000 jobs while discontinuing four models and closing five plants - 2002

Ratification of a new labor agreement at Titan Tire of Natchez, Miss. ends the longest strike in the history of the U.S. tire industry, which began May 1, 1998 at the company's Des Moines, Iowa, plant - 2001

Nearly 230 jailed teachers -- about one-fourth of the 1,000-member Middletown Township, N.J. staff -- are ordered freed after they and their colleagues agree to end a nine-day strike and go into mediation with the local school board - 2001

Arrests began today in Middleton, NJ of teachers striking in violation of a no-strike law. Ultimately 228 educators were jailed for up to seven days before they were released following the Middleton Township Education Association's agreement to take the dispute to mediation - 2001

Postal workers Joseph Cursseen and Thomas Morris die after inhaling anthrax at the Brentwood mail sorting center in Washington, D.C., which has since been re-named after them. Other postal workers are made ill. Letters containing the deadly spores had been addressed to U.S. Senate offices and media outlets - 2001

Graduate student employees at Temple University in Philadelphia win union recognition. The Temple University Graduate Students Association ratified its first contract in May 2002, significantly improving graduate employment in terms of healthcare and wages, and marking the first time that graduate students in the state bargained a contract with their employer.

More than 3,000 people died when suicide highjackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. Among the dead in New York were 634 union members, the majority of them New York City firefighters and police on the scene when the towers fell - 2001

California School Employees Association affiliates with AFL-CIO - 2001