In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the New York City Teachers Retirement System today pledged $1 billion in new investments for infrastructure projects, including improvements to transportation, power, water, communications and housing in New York City and throughout the state that was hit hard by the massive November storm.

The $1 billion pledge is part of a multiyear Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment to Action made by the AFL-CIO, AFT and partners in 2011.

Lee Sandberg, communications coordinator for the New Jersey State AFL-CIO, sends us this update.

The New Jersey State AFL-CIO, working together with its Executive Board members, central labor councils, Building Trades councils and affiliated unions, amassed a mountainous collection of union-made toys that was proudly presented to a team of U.S. Marines today in Trenton, on behalf of the U.S. Marine Corps' “Toys for Tots” program.

Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are taking a stand for striking Palermo's Pizza workers and you can help. They are asking university Chancellor David Ward to cut the contracts with Palermo’s unless the company hires back illegally fired workers and recognizes their union.

You can boost their cause by spreading the word with a tweet or Facebook post. Here’s how you do it.

President Obama sent a request to Congress asking for $60.4 billion to fund Hurricane Sandy storm recovery efforts. The request is expected to be introduced in legislation next week and will be debated after that.

Even a heartless Grinch should understand that cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits is a really bad idea.

The United States should adopt a universal and automatic voter registration system to boost participation and ensure all citizens have the opportunity to participate in the democratic process, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said this morning.

Speaking to the Funders' Committee for Civic Participation (FCCP), Trumka said a strong and growing grassroots democracy movement needs to come together to “push back against the next wave of state-level attacks on the right to vote.”

This is an excerpt of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka's "Opposing View: Union Jobs Build the Middle Class" from USA Today.

It's a tough time to work for a living.

Middle-class families have been losing ground for more than a decade. Today, working people have a smaller piece of the pie than at any time in the past 50 years. During that period, the number of people belonging to unions also declined steadily; in fact, if you look at the decline of the middle class beside the state of union membership, those numbers are parallel. This should concern everyone who cares about a strong America.

A recent poll confirms what a growing number of politicians, community leaders and mainstream news media already suspected: Most Latinos, like most other Americans in battleground states, support a plan to reduce the deficit that includes more revenue from tax increases for the wealthiest people.