The upcoming NBA season is in jeopardy after players rejected the league's latest offer for a new labor deal on Monday. "After two years of making a genuine and concerted effort to try to close a collective bargaining effort with the league and our teams, we've come to the conclusion today that that process has not worked for us," NBA Players Association president Derek Fisher said. The players have now begun the process of disbanding the union, and filing an anti-trust lawsuit against the NBA owners.

Four years ago, the United Auto Workers Union allowed the three Detroit auto makers to put in place a two-tier system for paying employees, which allowed them to continue to functioning and stay in business as they struggled to stay afloat. New hires were given a salary around $14 an hour, while their tier-one counterparts were making almost double that. The system has helped increase employment in Detroit and kept the auto giants from tanking, but many people say it's unfair.

Two unions that represent workers for Verizon announced an immediate strike on Sunday, demanding better treatment after a lack of progress in negotiating contracts. The Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the unions representing Verizon, last went on strike in 2000. Verizon union membership has shrunk by nearly in half since then, and is much weaker than before. Can union members still exert their influence in a strike?

Credit ratings agency Standard and Poor's downgraded the U.S.'s credit rating for the first time in history on Friday, causing jaws to drop across the country, and raising the blood-pressures of leaders worldwide as many held emergency meetings to fend off any backlash this news might create. President Obama will be preparing this week for his upcoming bus tour to reconnect with voters in the Midwest. Meanwhile, News Corp. will release their fourth quarter results on Wednesday, the PGA Championship kicks off on Thursday, and Dennis Rodman will be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday.

Tuesday is the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, which kicked off with the Battle for Fort Sumter. The battle began when confederate soldiers from Fort Johnson bombarded Fort Sumter, a piece of federal property in the Charleston, South Carolina harbor. In the end, Fort Sumter surrendered to the Confederates. In anticipation of Tuesday’s anniversary, enthusiasts from around the country have spent several years and thousands of dollars planning a reenactment of the Battle of Fort Sumter.

There's no question that Ohio's governor will sign the new anti-union bill, says Bill Cohen, State House Reporter for Ohio Public Radio. The bill strips public workers of their collective bargaining rights, outlaws public employee strikes, and makes job performance, not tenure, the key factor in raises and layoffs. Additionally, it says that public employees no longer have to pay union dues. But the fight isn't over with the signing of the bill. Union members plan to take the protest to the streets and to collect enough petition signatures to block the law until November, at which point voters will decide if it gets on the books.

Whether or not to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya is becoming a hot issue in Washington. Many lawmakers like Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), are calling for a no-fly zone, as rebels in Libya face rough times against the better equiped Libyan armed forces. Callie Crossley, host of The Callie Crossley Show on WGBH in Boston, looks at what we can expect next in the Libyan crisis this week.

According to a new New York Times/CBS News poll, most Americans support public sector workers in their fight against anti-union legislation in Wisconsin, Ohio and other parts of the country. According to the poll, 60 percent of Americans are opposed to weakening bargaining rights of public employee unions. Americans are surprisingly in favor of raising taxes instead of cutting benefits, and are opposed to weakening collective bargaining rights.

Over 70,000 people gathered in front of the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin on Saturday — the largest crowd since the protests began — to continue decrying Governor Scott Walker's efforts to limit state laborers' collective bargaining rights. Part of the outcry has been that the changes were included in the state's budget bill. It seems highly likely that public workers will have to concede some ground on how much they contribute to pension benefits and health insurance premiums. But what economic effect would those cuts and the collective bargaining changes actually have on the budget or the state economy?

While Indiana House Republicans are pushing for an anti-union bill to be passed, house Democrats have fled the state to stall a vote on it. Faced with the possibility of being arrested, Democrats are saying they will not return until the bill is taken off the table. For more on this developing story, we're joined by Dan Carden, State House Bureau Chief for North West Indiana Times.

In Wisconsin, the state's 14 Democratic senators left the state on Thursday in an attempt to stall a vote that would strip state workers of their bargaining right. There are 19 Senators in the Republican majority, but they need at least 20 for a quorum. Throughout the week, tens of thousands of state employees, including teachers and prison workers, have protested at the State Capitol in Madison, camping out in the building through the night and marching during the day. 

The siege at the Battle of Vicksburg, in Mississippi, was a crucial victory for Union forces, and catastrophic defeat for the Confederates. On the day of the battle, one Confederate general sent a coded message in a bottle to Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton, who was under siege in Vicksburg. The message was never received, and before this year, it had never been deciphered. Catherine Wright, collections manager at The Museum of the Confederacy, took on the challenge of deciphering the message. Confirmed by two cryptographers, the message reads, in part: “You can expect no help from this side of the river.”

It's State of the Union week and Grammy's weekend. We're building the soundtrack to the State of Your Union. What song would you pick?