UAW members at Ford Motor Co. have voted to approve a new four-year agreement with the automaker. In September, UAW members ratified a four-year contract with General Motors. Workers at Chrysler now are voting on a tentative deal reached earlier this month.

Following a huge and rapid public outcry that included hundreds of thousands of online petition signatures and phone calls to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office, a threatened clean-up/eviction of Occupy Wall Street protesters was postponed early this morning.

Tune in tonight (7-8:30 p.m. EDT) to join a live webcast of the AFL-CIO National Teach-In on jobs and the economy. Click here for the live webcast. The Teach-In is part of the AFL-CIO’s National Week of Action demanding Congress promote a real jobs agenda.

Mike Matthews, president of the Kanawha Valley (W.Va.) Labor Council, knows why more and more people are taking to the streets and speaking out against Big Banks, Wall Street and congressional Republicans who are standing in the way of job creation.

When reckless trading on Wall Street crashed the global economy, American taxpayers bailed out the Big Banks to the tune of $4.7 trillion. That is trillion with a “T”.

Yesterday in Coos Bay, Ore., near the U.S. McCullough Bridge where repair work is desperately needed on the 74-year-old span, Oregon union and community activists rallied to urge Congress to stop playing political games and start investing in important infrastructure projects, like the McCullough Bridge. The Oregon AFL-CIO says repairs stopped halfway across when funds dried up.

Beginning Monday, Oct. 10, the AFL-CIO’s America Wants to Work initiative will bring working people together in hundreds of events through Oct. 16 to demand action from Congress to promote a real jobs creation agenda.

The U.S. economy added just 103,000 jobs in September and the nation’s unemployment rate remained at 9.1 percent, according to the latest figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data  out this morning. Some 45,000 of those jobs, however, reflected Verizon workers’ return to work following a strike. According to Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist Heidi Shierholz, at the current rate of job creation, “the unemployment rate will soon begin to rise again.”

New York area union members will join an expected several thousand labor activists and supporters today in a Wall Street march and rally in support of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Watch AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in a live webcast at the Take Back the American Dream conference here at Free Speech TV today at 1:30 EDT.

Dave Johnson, a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, sends us this.

At another great Take Back the American Dream conference session this morning, panelists discussed how the nation doesn’t just need millions of new jobs, but it needs jobs that pay well and enable workers to support themselves and their families.