By Matt Murray

Looking back over the last year on the national labor movement scene, I'm struck by what a ride it's been.  Do you remember where you were one year ago?

I do not remember the specifics, however I remember watching the news and following on Twitter for any news on the growing crowds in the Wisconsin State House. It was a year ago when Governor Scott Walker took his extreme Tea Party agenda out on the working people of Wisconsin by repealing their rights to collective bargain. Since then, sort of like a cancer, these anti-worker legislations have grown all across the United States. After Wisconsin, Ohio attempted to repeal worker rights. The workers in Ohio stood together and delivered more than one million petitions leading to the successful overturn of the newly-passed collective bargaining laws. Not to be outdone, other Tea Party legislators took aim at unions. In Maine, Gov. Paul LePage removed the Department of Labor's lobby mural.

Now, New Hampshire is following right down the same path. New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O'Brien is pushing dozens of anti-worker bills. These bills range from the repeal of collective bargaining to "Right To Work" to restrictions on bargaining articles. Every single one of these bills is an attempt for the legislators to restrict the "where" and "what" unions can negotiate. Just yesterday members of local unions gathered at the NH House to speak against one of the many Right To Work bills being revisited in this year's session. This, after we spent all of last year fighting against Right To Work. Thankfully, we have a governor who stands up for the middle class and for workers' rights. Without Gov. Lynch, Granite Staters would all be in the same situation as Wisconsin and Ohio residents right now.

After Gov. Walker repealed collective bargaining in Wisconsin, labor around the country suddenly took notice. By the end, 30,000 people were occupying the State House rotunda. Maybe this was the punch in the face that labor needed to awake the sleeping giant that is labor unions. While labor has always been there, now labor has risen again. People are slowly seeing the value of collectively standing together. This has worked for more than 100 years for unions and now is beginning to take shape in the Occupy Movement that is sweeping the country. New Hampshire AFL-CIO President Mark MacKenzie has a signature at the end of all of his emails that sums it up perfectly: "Bargain Together or Beg Alone."

To the right is a video highlighting the events from February 2011 and the events surrounding the Wisconsin State House.