A new film documents the story of how a town’s residents took a stand after a hate crime killing devastated their community. “Not In Our Town: Light in the Darkness,” debuts Wed., Sept. 21, at 10 p.m. EDT on PBS.

President Obama today outlined a proposal to add $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue to pay for his proposed American Jobs Act to put Americans back to work. In a speech this morning from the White House, he said lawmakers need to focus first and foremost on creating jobs and challenged Congress to do so.

Farm workers who toil in the tobacco fields of North Carolina often spend hours in the blistering sun and get paid less than the minimum wage. They are exposed to toxic chemicals just to do their jobs, according to a new report issued yesterday.

We loved Mary Tyler Moore as Laura Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and as the iconic Mary Richards on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” roles in which she created a new paradigm for female leads in television.

The UAW reached a tentative agreement with General Motors Co. (GM) late last night. The union says the new pact, which covers 48,500 employees, achieved some major goals, including significant investments and products for GM plants, creating good new U.S. jobs and bringing back to this country some overseas manufacturing.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry touts his job creation record as governor of Texas, but the reality is that new Texas-style jobs are low-wage jobs. Writing on RobertReich.org, University of California, Berkeley, professor and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich says even though Texas leads the nation in job growth, a majority of Texas’ workforce is paid hourly wages rather than salaries. And the median hourly wage there was $11.20, compared with the national median of $12.50 an hour.

A new international comparison makes it clear just how weak  protections are for working people in the United States. University of Missouri-St. Louis associate professor Kenneth Thomas reviewed numbers from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and found that in 21 categories,

Update: You can now buy this award-winning poster (at left). The full-color, 13” x 19” poster (union-printed on union-made paper, of course) is suitable for framing .  It is available for $15 through the UCS Labor Books “Bookstore” page at www.unionist.com.

The road to economic growth and a full recovery lies in allowing the deficit to grow temporarily and investing in programs that put money in the hands of consumers, two nonpartisan experts said. 

While nearly 50 million Americans are without health insurance, the number of uninsured young adults and children dropped by about 500,000, according to a report yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau.