A big part of the American Dream is based on the premise that if you work hard, you can provide for yourself and your family. But in today’s economy, good jobs are disappearing. To survive, America's workers are forced to take low-paying jobs that rarely offer health care or retirement security—and that's not right, says Constance, a 59-year-old single woman from Illinois. If you work in the United States, you should be able to do more than just scrape by. I left a job in a neighboring state two years ago to come back to help take care of my last immediate family member. I am single. I moved to Illinois, accepting a position with a small insurance company, who downsized, and within six months I was out of work. You can't afford health insurance on unemployment wages.

With the annual Workers Memorial Day commemoration coming up next month, the AFL-CIO Cool Tools selection is highlighting "Workingman's Death," a movie documenting six of the most dangerous, deadly and exploitive jobs on the planet. Filmmaker Michael Glawogger says he "wanted to make a movie where you sit in the cinema and actually feel the weight on your back." That's exactly what he did with "Workingman's Death," a harsh documentary about manual labor around the world. He shows us Ukrainian miners digging for coal in mine shafts only 16 inches wide, Nigerian slaughterhouse workers surrounded by animal blood and stench, and Pakistanis who dismantle an abandoned oil tanker for scrap metal with little more than their bare hands.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is running for president, and he’s running on a Bush-style platform that won’t turn America around for working families. In a time of economic crisis, this could stop his candidacy cold—because the last thing we need is more of McSame. There’s one problem, though: The national press, whose job it is to talk about the policies and priorities of candidates, hasn’t given McCain any scrutiny on the real issues. The media elite decided long ago that they like him too much to look too closely. As a corrective to this media bias, Media Matters for America has released Free Ride: John McCain and the Media in which authors David Brock and Paul Waldman detail exactly how the senator has been able to manipulate the press over his decades-long career in Washington.

More than 100 years after our nation ended slavery, the mostly immigrant workers who today pick tomatoes for the fast-food industry still are being treated like slaves. They are among the most exploited workers in the country, sometimes held against their will, beaten and forced to work for little or no pay. Thousands more are trying to survive on poverty wages with no sick leave and no freedom to join unions for a better life. They are fighting back, demanding to be treated fairly, and they need your help. The workers are reaching out to 1 million people to sign a petition demanding that Burger King and food industry leaders work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to improve the wages and conditions for the workers who pick tomatoes.

More than 47 million people in this country have no health insurance. Yet the vast majority of those who have no health insurance are employed—a travesty that sometimes ends with tragic consequences, as Sharon from Michigan told the AFL-CIO/Working America 2008 Health Care for America Survey. My mother-in-law was employed in a low-wage job that did not provide health care coverage. She became ill and could not afford to go to a doctor on her own. My husband and I urged her to go, stating we would pay for the visit. By the time she got to the doctor, she had pneumonia and required hospitalization. The pneumonia placed so much stress on her system that she ended up dying. If she had had health care coverage and been able to go to the doctor for treatment earlier, she likely would not have died.

Earlier this week, the Social Security Board of Trustees released the 65th annual report on the program’s financial status. And on cue, the Bush administration and the Wall Street-knows-best crowd—now joined by Sen. John McCain (who acknowledges " economics is something I've never really understood as well as I should")—used the occasion to push for privatizing Social Security. You know, turning over seniors' retirement security to the stock market's financial wizards who supposedly will show a bit more fiduciary acumen than the folks who presided over Bear Stearns' crash and burn.

Mike Cerbo, executive director of the Colorado AFL-CIO, describes how he and area union members greeted Sen. John McCain outside a ritzy fund-raising event, demanding to know why McCain's plan to fix the nation's mortgage crisis is to blame homeowners. Hearing chants of "Stop Foreclosures," John McCain passed a group of 50 union activists on his way to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser at the Petroleum Club in Denver. Holding giant "Turn Around America" signs, dozens of union members from AFSCME, AFGE, APWU, ATU, CWA, IBEW, SMWIA, UA and USW greeted the senator from Arizona. The crowd heard from Denver resident Linda Donna, 55, who has been severely impacted by the foreclosure crisis. She was a victim of a "bait and switch" tactic—she originally was promised a lower interest rate, but at the last minute, the lender raised it.

The demand for energy is growing rapidly as the number of utility workers is declining and infrastructure is aging—even as concerns grow over global climate change. To more effectively meet these new challenges, the Electrical Workers (IBEW) is forging an unprecedented labor-management partnership in the utility industry. In an innovative initiative, the IBEW, which represents 250,000 utility workers across the United States and Canada, is urging members to foster excellence in their skills and performance at work while also seeking a more cooperative relationship with management.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) spent much of this week in California, holding closed-door, big-dollar fundraisers with his corporate cronies—but he got more than he bargained for. Union members were at each event, calling him out on his anti-worker record. In addition to successful events held this week across Southern California, union members turned out strongly yesterday to confront McCain in Pebble Beach and San Francisco. Enthusiastic members of the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council and the San Francisco Labor Council held signs, chanted and let their fellow Californians know that McCain is wrong for working families—all part of the AFL-CIO’s national McCain Revealed campaign.

Instead of protecting the rights of workers to join unions and bargain for a better life, a Republican-dominated National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in recent years took away the rights of millions of workers to be represented by unions, made it harder to form unions through majority sign-up, limited the ability of illegally fired workers to recover back pay and allowed employers to discriminate against union supporters in the hiring process. In recent months, our allies on Capitol Hill joined our campaign for a fair NLRB that does its job to protect workers’ freedom to join a union. Last November, workers across the country protested the ongoing assault on worker rights by the Bush-appointed NLRB, saying until a pro-worker labor board is appointed, the agency should be "closed for renovations." Now, it seems, workers have successfully stalled, if not derailed, the NLRB’s assault on workers’ rights until a new president can appoint new board members.

Two proposed Nevada ballot measures—thinly veiled attacks on workers and unions backed by secret out-of-state donors—bit the dust this week when the front group for the initiatives announced the measures would be withdrawn. Nevadans for Nevada, a coalition of unions and community, civil rights and other groups filed suit challenging the two measures last week.

No city loves its cars like Los Angeles, and keeping those cars looking good is big business. The city of Los Angeles has more car washes—430—than any other metropolitan area in the country. According to the Western Carwash Association, an industry trade group, car washes in Southern California average about $1 million gross annual income and can have a profit margin of up to a whopping 29 percent. But if you are one of the thousands of workers who shampoo, wax, dry and detail cars, you don’t see any of that profit—in fact, you may not get paid at all. You also may have to work long hours in 100-degree heat, with no lunch break, no fresh water to drink and risk getting sick by being exposed constantly to harsh and dangerous chemicals.

There was a time in the not too distant past when the nation's health care system seemed to work pretty well for a lot of people. That was before, says Caroline, a 61-year-old from California, the private insurance companies became the heart—though certainly not the soul—of health care in America. Every time I see an insurance high rise building, I become a little livid knowing that they own those buildings with the blood and deaths of the rest of us. There was a time when hospitals were nonprofit…when doctors made a good living without gouging, when doctors had time for their patients instead of filling out insurance forms and waiting for the company to okay the procedure…with denials and delays, the patient now is either broke, sicker or dead.

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) kicked off his campaign for re-election yesterday—and he was met by union members who are trying to tell the truth about Coleman’s poor record when it comes to issues that matter to working families. Coleman flew to three events around the state and at each one, union members were out in force to confront Coleman about his anti-worker record. In St. Paul, Rochester and Duluth, labor leaders and activists talked about Coleman’s tight ties with big-money special interests and his deeply flawed votes. Laura Askelin, president of the Southeast Minnesota Area Labor Council, points to Coleman’s voting record and his allegiance to the Bush agenda and says that Coleman won’t make the changes needed (see video above).

Martin Luther King Jr. was killed 40 years ago while trying to help striking sanitation workers in Memphis gain dignity and respect on the job. On March 31, historian Michael Honey, whose book Going Down Jericho Road chronicles King’s last campaign, will share stories from the workers and discuss the strike’s impact on the civil rights movement during a presentation at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C. Those in the Washington area who can attend the event also can take a look at an exhibit of photos and quotes in our lobby that commemorate the sanitation strike and King’s commitment to working people. The AFL-CIO exhibit runs through June 30. In a Point of View guest column on the AFL-CIO website, Honey says we should remember King not only for his “I Have a Dream” speech and his leadership of the civil rights revolution, but also for his quest for economic equality.

Major league ballplayers in Florida will trade in their ball caps and flip-down shades for red- and white-striped "Cat-in-the-Hat" toppers and other Dr. Seuss gear as part of "Read Across Spring Training." The players are making a special pitch to young people: Reading is fun and interesting. As part of the National Education Association's (NEA's) "Read Across America" literacy campaign, several of the teams' spring training facilities will host read-ins for local children this month. "Read Across America" is a year-around program that began in 1997. The reading initiative kicked off its 2008 activities last week on Dr. Seuss' birthday, March 3, with read-ins in Atlanta, Austin, Texas, and Chicago. Hundreds of children, parents, educators and local celebrities turned out at a kick-off event in Georgia at the Children's Museum of Atlanta. Said NEA President Reg Weaver: The site of the kickoff event is fitting because of its uniqueness that celebrates fun and brings out the kid in all of us—just as Dr. Seuss did with the magic of the written word.…Although children have many distractions like TV, video games and high-tech gadgets, nothing rivals the power of the written world. The challenge is cutting through the competitive clutter to get children energized about reading.

More than 450 service workers at St. Mary Medical Center in California join the United Steelworkers (USW) and more from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 900 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work. Organizing USW, St. Mary Medical Center: More than 450 service workers at St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley, Calif., voted to join the United Steelworkers (USW). About 160 technical workers at the hospital already are members of the USW.

Illinois union members were crucial in this weekend’s upset victory for Bill Foster in the 14th House District special election. Foster, a Democrat who received the Illinois AFL-CIO endorsement in his first run for office, won a 53–47 victory over Republican Jim Oberweis on Saturday, winning the seat vacated by former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. It’s a big change for this district, which gave Bush 55 percent of its votes in 2004 and re-elected Hastert with more than 60 percent of the vote for two decades.

Do you want to know how Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) voted on a move to repeal the federal minimum wage? Are you interested in Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) vote on a measure to rein in the soaring cost of prescription drugs for seniors and working families? How about finding out where Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) stood on a bill that would restore the freedom of airport screeners to join a union? Or maybe you just want to know if your U.S. House member voted with working families last year? All that information and more about your U.S. senators and representatives is just a click or two away in the AFL-CIO's final 2007 House and Senate Voting Records. The congressional scorecards track 19 Senate votes and 24 House votes from the first session of the 110th Congress.

Barb Kucera, editor at Workday Minnesota, describes an action by St. Paul Hubbard Broadcasting workers in support of striking New York union members. In solidarity with New York television station workers trying to achieve a fair contract, Minnesota union members took their case directly to the station's owner: St. Paul-based Hubbard Broadcasting. Several dozen union members rallied this week at KSTP-Channel 5, the flagship station of Hubbard Broadcasting, which also owns WNYT-NewsChannel 13 in Albany, N.Y. KSTP is nonunion (owner Stanley Hubbard busted a union at the station decades ago), but 90 broadcast employees and technicians at WNYT are represented by NABET-CWA Local 21. They have been without a contract since Sept. 30. Negotiations broke down over numerous management demands for concessions.