Yesterday I stumbled upon the start of a march by several thousand building workers, members of SEIU Local 32BJ up swanky Park Avenue in New York City’s Upper East Side. The building workers face a contract deadline in less than a week, and have already authorized a strike. At stake are significant cuts to the building workers’ health care and sick days, as well as the elimination of overtime pay. You can read more about the struggle at StandWithBuildingWorkers.org.

Here are some photos of the march; you can find more in my Flickr set.

The fate of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) over the course of the past year and a half has been largely determined by the White House. Rahm Emanuel would not let it come up for a vote until after health care was passed, and by that time the Democrats no longer had 60 votes in the Senate. But its evolution is also intimately tied to the electoral prospects of Harry Reid and Arlen Specter, and unless you understand one, you can’t understand the other.

Natasha Vargas-Cooper, a former colleague of mine from SEIU’s Change that Works campaign, writes a must-read piece at The Awl that brilliantly sums up the entirety of SEIU and Andy Stern. If you only read one thing about Andy Stern today, make it hers.

Ben Smith dropped a bombshell this evening with his report that SEIU President Andy Stern will resign. Stern, president of one of the country’s biggest unions since 1996, reportedly plans to resign before the end of his term in 2012. So what’s really going on here?

Arlen Specter didn’t vocally oppose the Employee Free Choice Act. He single-handedly killed the entire bill.

The Change to Win labor federation has unsurprisingly backed the health care bill, even with the increased excise tax on middle class health care plans. Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO’s Executive Committee is still discussing its support for the bill with the increased tax.

The collective reaction to the State of the Union from the labor movement seems to be, “Let’s see what you’ve got, Obama.” Leaders from across the movement commended the President for his speech and his agenda, with a collective focus on jobs as the takeaway from the speech. But with a notable exception: International Association of Machinists President Tom Buffenbarger unloads on Obama for a lack of specifics on jobs.

John Nichols has an interesting piece over at The Nation about the fallout from last week’s Citizens United decision from the Supreme Court. It’s a pretty brutal take on the thinking that lead the AFL-CIO to file an amicus brief supporting unlimited corporate spending.

In case you had any doubts the passage of the health care bill will be just as disastrous for Democrats as the rout of 1994, Rahm Emanuel is here to reassure you. It will be just like NAFTA! And Rahm thinks that’s a good thing.

The AFL-CIO issued a statement on LieberCare, and the labor federation isn’t happy. President Richard Trumka says the current bill is “inadequate,” is funded “the wrong way,” and stops short of outright opposing the whole package for now.