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.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka issued the following statement on President Obama’s jobs and the economy proposal that he presented to a joint session of Congress tonight.

The President took an important and necessary step tonight: he started a serious national conversation about how to solve our jobs crisis. He showed working people that he is willing to go to the mat to create new jobs on a substantial scale. Tonight’s speech should energize the nation to come together, work hard and get serious about jobs.

In a letter to President Obama, 70 progressive groups urge the president to use tonight’s address to the nation on jobs and the economy to present a plan that is “big, bold and creates jobs directly.”

Join progressive activists from around the nation to map out strategy to Take Back the American Dream and rebuild America’s struggling middle class. The annual conference (formerly known as the America’s Future Now conference) is set for Oct. 3-5 in Washington, D.C. Click here to register.

The Republican budget approach of “cut,  cut, cut” has jeopardized our economic recovery and Democrats are poised to turn the debate back to what’s most on American’s minds: creating and maintaining good jobs, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said today.

There are 44 members of the United States Senate who don’t want consumer and working family advocate Elizabeth Warren to run the new federal agency designed to protect consumers and working families from the kind of Wall Street and Big Bank abuses last year’s landmark Wall Street reform legislation outlawed.