Last week we told you that paycheck deception and other anti-worker legislation formulated in the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC's) corporate-backed laboratories were moving in the Missouri legislature. Now paycheck deception is close to a Senate vote, and the Missouri AFL-CIO is urging Show-Me State voters to call their state senators—1-888-907-9711—and urge them to oppose S.B. 29.

The AFL-CIO Executive Council called for a “high-wage” economic strategy, a new trade model and universal voter registration coupled with vigorous protection of the right to vote at its February meeting in Orlando, Fla., today. The Executive Council also addressed gender equality and commemorated the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington .

In its statement on economic strategy, the council says, “There is something fundamentally wrong with the U.S. economy,” that has resulted in “the stagnation of wages and incomes that has crippled the American middle class for more than a generation.”

A replacement worker at American Crystal Sugar Co.’s East Grand Forks, Minn., plant was seriously injured last month, suffering severe burns when he was hit with hot liquid that spewed from a tank, according to news reports.  

The company has been operating with replacement workers since it locked out its highly trained 1,300 member workforce in August 2011. The locked-out workers are members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) and worked at plants in Iowa, Minnesota and North Dakota.

The AFL-CIO Executive Council today called on Congress to repeal—not replace—the economically destructive budget cuts that Republicans in Congress are using as leverage to demand Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare benefit cuts. If the sequester is to be replaced, in whole or in part, the council called for closing tax loopholes for Wall Street and the wealthiest 2%, which would minimize harm to the economy.  

Take a look at these videos of working families who are speaking out against Republican lawmakers' attempt to shove the economy to the edge of another manufactured fiscal crisis in order to extract painful benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and protect tax breaks and big loopholes for corporations and the wealthy. Working families demonstrated outside the offices of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

Today, AARP is asking working families to call Congress to tell their elected legislators they oppose the "chained" CPI that would cut Social Security benefits. 

As we near the conclusion of this week’s launch of @Work, today we are spotlighting “Innovation,” one of the seven featured categories of the new AFL-CIO site.

The partition that separates diners from the inner workings of the restaurant industry toppled for Saru Jayaraman shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Fekkak Mamdouh, one of the headwaiters of the restaurant housed on the top floor of the World Trade Center, approached Jayaraman seven months after the attacks. His former boss deemed him and his former crew “not experienced enough” to work in his new Times Square restaurant. Jayaraman, a 27-year-old organizer of immigrant women, took up the case to advocate for the displaced workers, organized protests and won—most of the workers were awarded the good jobs their former boss promised.

Over the weekend, two prominent Colombian union leaders survived an assassination attempt in Cali, a city of more than 2.2 million in western Colombia.

The targets—Luis Miguel Morantes Alfonso and Adolfo Devia Paz of the Colombian Confederation of Workers (CTC, after its name in Spanish) and Emcali Union (USE)—survived unharmed inside a bullet-proof SUV provided by the Colombian government, according to a communiqué released by the National Labor School (ENS), a Colombian nonprofit organization dedicated to the empowerment of workers in the country. 

The Washington Post recently released a handy state-by-state breakdown of how the sequester cuts will affect jobs and services in every state. These figures are based on White House estimates. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) also details these harmful cuts here. 

See how the sequester would affect your state here.