Working families across the country will participate in a Candlelight Campaign on Dec. 10 to urge Congress to end tax cuts for the richest 2% and to say "no" to benefit cuts for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The candlelight rallies, town halls, vigils and other events will coincide with International Human Rights Day.

AFGE is leading a coalition that is standing up to any further wage cuts for federal government employees. AFGE members are concerned that working families employed by the federal government will once again be the target of wage, benefit or pension cuts. In the past decade, federal workers have been targeted for $103 billion in cuts—an average of $50,000 per worker. Federal workers have not received a raise since January 2010; as of January 2013, new employees will pay nearly four times as much into their pension funds as current workers do.

The Yahoo Finance show "The Daily Ticker" uses its latest episode to lay out the case for why labor unions are important, particularly in the current economy. Really. The show isn't exactly pro-working families—and it runs through a litany of false and misleading attacks on unions—but the hosts, Aaron Task and Henry Blodget, argue that owners and management have gone too far in accumulating wealth and power and it's important for unions to counter-balance that. They argue that not only are growing inequality and exploitation of workers bad for society, they're bad for business.

Republican congressional leaders offered their budget counter-proposal Monday in response to President Obama's proposal, but it does little more than rehash previous offers that were clearly rejected by the voters in November's election.

Gaby Pacheco, the leader of the DREAM youth movement from Miami and one of the co-founders of Students Working for Equal Rights, tells her story in a recent TEDx Talk. Pacheco moved to the United States from Ecuador when she was eight. She grew up a hardworking student who was elected student government president of Miami Dade Community College and the statewide community college student government organization. Along the way she faced many obstacles as an aspiring citizen, from an encounter with the Ku Klux Klan to the inability to find work because of her lack of papers verifying citizenship.

A new study of proposals from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) shows that policies the organization promotes do more to harm the economy than help it, despite the claims of the group's lead researcher and author, Arthur Laffer. States that are highly rated in ALEC's annual Rich States, Poor States report actually do worse economically than states ALEC rates poorly, according to Selling Snake Oil to the States, by Good Jobs First.

Office clerical workers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, members of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 63, are striking in order to protect jobs in America that pay well and help drive the economy. Employers walked out of negotiations Saturday, prompting International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) Acting General Secretary Stephen Cotton to condemn the international carriers and terminal operators.

In a time of widespread calls for education "reform" that are little more than thinly veiled attempts at privatizing schools, the AFT has a new proposal that would actually help solve some of the problems American education faces. The AFT Teacher Preparation Task Force released a report, Raising the Bar—Aligning and Elevating Teacher Preparation and the Teaching Profession, that recommends the equivalent of a "bar" exam for teachers, similar to the tests that lawyers have to pass before they can legally practice.

We have five weeks to tell Congress to let the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2% expire and reject any benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Visit www.aflcio.org/ProtectOurFuture for all the information you need on the upcoming budget showdown. 

As Congress deliberates during the "lame-duck" session, benefits for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are being targeted for cuts. Some say benefit cuts are necessary because we face a debt crisis, but working families and their allies strongly reject such claims. It is true that we face a projected budget imbalance over the long term, but the answer is to tackle the real reasons for this imbalance and not use deficits as an excuse to pursue unrelated agendas.  Here are a few specific AFL-CIO suggestions that would tackle the true causes of this problem without cutting benefits.

President Obama came out Wednesday in opposition to Rep. Lamar Smith's (R-Texas) STEM Act, which would increase the number of visas available to highly skilled immigrants while reducing the visas available to people coming from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. The bill would add 55,000 visas to masters and doctoral degree holders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and it would eliminate all of the so-called "diversity" visas.