For American labor, year one of Barack Obama's presidency has been close to an unmitigated disaster.

"It's beyond belief to me," said Robert Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO...,"there aren't any excuses anymore. If you can't deliver health care, and you can't deliver jobs, and if you can't deliver [card check legislation], and you can't figure out how to take care of the working people of this great city and country, you don’t deserve to stay in office."

3/4 of Americans want to see a huge worker protection bill pass through Congress, and the greedy corporations are running scared.

Key Senate Democrats are wavering in their support of legislation that would give more power to labor unions, dealing a setback to labor's top priority as businesses warn of the damage the bill would cause.

Officials tasked with helping push the Employee Free Choice Act through Congress are growing concerned about the possible defection of Senate Democrats in a debate that is bound to be heated and close.

Union membership jumped to 12.4 percent of the nation's work force last year, despite widespread job losses in a troubled economy.

The National Labor Relations Board found on Dec. 23 that Starbucks had illegally fired three New York City baristas as it tried to squelch the union organizing effort.

The current financial crisis presents an opportunity to scrap the failed policies of neoliberal economics and make America's economic policy both stronger and fairer. By rejecting band-aid solutions, taking decisive action to stop the bleeding, holding the culprits accountable, and reforming our financial system to address the root causes of the crisis, we would do future generations a great service.

The Wall Street crisis of 2008 was the inevitable culmination of decades of neoliberal economic policy, which views free markets and deregulation as the solution to every problem. Investigative journalist Naomi Klein explains how this dangerous ideology took hold throughout US academia and government, and why the Wall Street crisis should be for neoliberalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for Soviet Communism.

The Change To Win Coalition and the AFL-CIO should jointly send a letter to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Charles Schumer (head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee) and Chris Hollen (head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) demanding that party members return every dime to Wal-Mart.

Lucy Gómez still shudders when speaking of the murder of her brother, Leonidas, a union leader and bank employee who was beaten and stabbed to death here last month. His murder was part of a recent increase in killings of union members in Colombia, with 17 already this year.

The roll of American workers belonging to labor unions climbed last year by the largest number since 1983, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.