The sauce may be good, but the owner is rotten – and that's why UNITE HERE Local 17 said it has launched a boycott of Savoy Pizza, once a longtime union shop.

Affiliates of the Minnesota AFL-CIO touted their organizing successes Tuesday at the labor federation's biennial convention, reporting more than 10,000 workers were organized in the past year.

With the 2006 elections first and foremost on their minds, union members from across the state gathered Monday for the biennial convention of the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

Several new courses, including a "Building Solidarity Series" and a fresh approach to Internal Organizing, are featured in the 2006-2007 schedule offered by the University of Minnesota Labor Education Service.

Jobs, education, health care, transportation – bread and butter issues – dominated the Minnesota Building Trades' annual convention, where the focus was clearly on this fall's elections.

A "Labor Family Solidarity Picnic" for AFSCME, MAPE and other union members will be held Thursday, Aug. 3, from 4 to 6 p.m. at the state Capitol.

Faulty seals in an abandoned part of the Sago, W. Va., coal mine were one factor in the lethal Jan. 2 blast that killed 12 miners and injured a 13th, a new West Virginia state report says.

MINNCOR Industries allegedly violated the state whistleblower statute and allegedly violated the state age discrimination statute when it laid off five longtime employees, according to two lawsuits filed in Ramsey County District Court.

As a much-needed rain fell on the Twin Cities, a coalition of community, faith and labor leaders held a prayer vigil in front of North Memorial Medical Center to urge a fair contract settlement for health care workers.

For many years, union members and friends of labor went out of their way to order pizza from the Savoy, a unionized restaurant at the edge of downtown St. Paul. That may change, however, as UNITE HERE Local 17 is picketing the Savoy.

As Twin Cities hospital workers head back to the bargaining table, the Twin Cities Religion and Labor Network will hold a prayer vigil for a fair settlement of the long-running negotiations. The vigil will be Monday, July 24, at 5:30 p.m., in front of North Memorial Medical Center, 3300 Oakdale Ave. N., Robbinsdale.

Working America, a community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, has recruited 50,000 new members in Minnesota this year.

In yet another step that Wal-Mart doesn't like, the Chicago City Council is tentatively scheduled to vote July 26 on a law to require "big box" stores to pay living wages to their workers.

The trade issue, including the $720 billion-plus U.S. trade deficit and what such red ink means for workers, jobs, health care, pensions and eventually the entire country, will have a big impact on the campaign trail this fall, speakers told a labor-sponsored forum on the issue.

The closing of three Rainbow grocery stores in the Twin Cities is closely tied to the growth of "big box" retailers, the union says.

Significant improvements are on the way for home-based child care as part of a trailblazing partnership between Hennepin County and AFSCME, government and union leaders said.

Banging pots and pans, blowing whistles and chanting, demonstrators issued a "wake-up call" Friday to management at the Holiday Inn Select hotel near Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Saying its members believe George W. Bush's education law, the five-year-old gets "a failing grade," the nation's largest union voted to lobby for a comprehensive rewrite of the statute next year.

Northwest flight attendants elected the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA as their new bargaining representative in ballots counted Thursday by the National Mediation Board. The new union said it will immediately begin talks with the airline, which is seeking to have a bankruptcy court overturn the current flight attendants' contract.

A one-day conference on "Workplace Collaboration: Innovation from around the World," will be held Tuesday, Aug. 15, in Chicago.