AFL-CIO Field Communications staffer Cathy Sherwin sends us this report.

Opponents of working people in Michigan are pushing a bill that would gut protections for workers hurt on the job and give employers more power to dictate where injured workers could seek treatment. The bill also would slash benefits by factoring in “imaginary” wages and pensions and deducting from benefits—reducing workers’ compensation by the amount someone might be able to earn, regardless of the availability of an actual job.

Michael J. Smith, AFL-CIO Community Services Liaison in Monroe, Mich., sends us this report.  

For the past 20 years, Monroe (Mich.) Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 326 has held an annual holiday dinner serving those in need in the city of Monroe.

Andrew Pantelis, a lieutenant with the Prince George’s County Fire and EMS Department in Landover, Md., says that taxing employer-provided health care benefits—a proposal before the so-called budget deficit “Super Committee”—would “hurt millions of working class Americans.”

With the fight in Ohio to defeat Issue 2 coming down to its final days, the Fire Fighters (IAFF) have launched ads featuring firefighters who are war veterans urging voters to vote “No on Issue 2.”  A “No” vote on Issue 2 would repeal S.B. 5, the law passed this spring that takes away the right of public employees to collectively bargain for a middle-class life.

To paraphrase that classic Wendy’s hamburger ad, when it comes to the Republicans’ so-called jobs plan, “Where’s the Jobs?

Cuts instituted by Congress for the 2011 fiscal year eliminate some 370,000 jobs, while endangering the public and delaying necessary repairs and infrastructure work that will only be more expensive to complete in the future, according to a new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP).

Deborah Dion with the Ohio AFL-CIO field program sends us this.

More than 250 firefighters and working families rallied for an early vote  in Mansfield, Ohio, to defeat Issue 2. Voting “NO” on Issue 2 would repeal S.B. 5, passed earlier this year, that gutted collective bargaining rights for public employees.

In May, on the last day of Teacher Appreciation Week in Broward County, Fla., Cherine Akbari was honored “with a fancy embroidered jacket and handed a pink slip.”

Across the country, tens of thousands of firefighters, paramedics and teachers have been laid off and the jobs of tens of thousands more are under threat. As this nationwide ad from the Fire Fighters (IAFF) shows, those first responder cuts are threatening public safety.

Yesterday, President Obama was in Colorado highlighting his plan to put Americans back to work modernizing the nation’s aging schools and to make sure there are plenty of teachers to fill those schools. The plan involves $30 billion to put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work modernizing at least 35,000 schools across the country, and $35 billion to save the jobs of 280,000 teachers, police, firefighters and other first responders. American Progress puts the Republican opposition to the president’s plan in perspective.