State House

BOSTON/State House - Supporters and opponents of a bill that would change the way temporary agencies do business in Massachusetts squared off in front of the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development on Thursday in Gardiner Auditorium at the State House. Advocates for the Act Updating and Streamlining the Employment Agency Law (House Bill 1393) - which they dub the “Reform Employment Agency Law” or the “REAL bill" - made the case that bottom feeders in the temp industry are operating outside existing labor law and exploiting workers due to a lack of regulation.

BOSTON/State House - Over 1,000 teenagers and youth advocates from across Massachusetts marched from Copley Square to the State House on Thursday to lobby for more funding for youth jobs in the Fiscal Year 2012 Mass. state budget. Gov. Deval Patrick, several legislators and business leaders addressed the marchers at a rally in Gardiner Auditorium. Patrick called both for more funding for youth jobs in the upcoming budget and for the private sector to do its part to hire more young people - especially in the summer time when young people are out of school.

BOSTON/State House - Over 50 members of the local clergy, religious educators and supporters held a press conference at the Mary Dyer statue in front of the Massachusetts State House on Tuesday "in response to the recent controversy regarding the proposed mosques and Islamic cultural centers in Manhattan and elsewhere." The organizers - representing the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Unitarian Universalist, Jewish and Muslim communities - released an Interfaith Pledge entitled "To Bigotry No Sanction, To Persecution No Assistance" that had already been signed by close to 1,000 people at the t

BOSTON/State House - Over 11 days ago, activists from the Student Immigrant Movement began a vigil outside the State House to protest a budget amendment recently passed by the Mass. Senate that would - among other things - bar them from attending public colleges in the Commonwealth at the same in-state tuition rate as other area students.