Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday we celebrate this weekend, died fighting for the freedom of Memphis sanitation workers to form a union with AFSCME. For King, economic justice went hand in hand with civil rights and the right to join a union was critical to gaining economic justice.

Children working in factories, picking crops and hauling lumber on construction sites is a vision Mike Lee, the Republican senator from Utah, apparently wants to make a reality again in the United States. In a lecture on his YouTube channel, Lee explains in great detail why he believes U.S. child labor laws are unconstitutional.

When Teresa Laws takes the bullhorn this evening, she will raise her voice to speak out for some of our most vulnerable citizens: children and those who need constant home care.

Companies that do not allow union elections violate human rights, said Bob King, president of the UAW, which is talking with some foreign auto companies that have plants in the United States about a set of principles aimed at ensuring fair elections. Such principles are necessary, King said, because National Labor Relations Board procedures are outdated and allow companies to intimidate workers and spread misinformation. Transplant companies are foreign-owned companies that have plants in the United States.

Rather than helping working people to save their homes, banks foreclosed on more than 1 million properties last year, which will slow the economic recovery and obstruct job growth, especially in construction.

Register now for the 2011 Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference, Feb. 8–10 in Washington, D.C. With unemployment above 9.0 percent for more than 20 months, thousands of union, environmental, business, community and elected leaders will discuss how to create millions of good green jobs across the United States. The conference is the leading forum for sharing ideas and strategies to grow a green economy that creates good jobs, addresses global warming and other environmental problems and preserves America’s economic and environmental security.

The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) has brought union representation to a growing group of workers who do not fit the traditional union model: freelance writers and producers who work on nonfiction TV shows.

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) reached a tentative agreement with Kaiser Permanente today. The three-year contract includes more than 20 important professional and economic enhancements and, significantly, no reductions in patient care protections or economic or professional practice standards, according to the union.

Wages have fallen lower and stayed low longer in this recession than in any time since the Depression. With unemployment at 9 percent or better for 20 months and likely to stay that way for a while, wages will continue to drop.

In the global economic race, the United States is coming in second—and one of the major reasons is that we have stopped making things in this country. A recent poll shows the public thinks it’s going to be that way for awhile. Only one in five Americans say the U.S. economy is the world’s strongest. Nearly half (47 percent) say China’s economy is stronger and only one in three expects the United States to regain the top spot in the next 20 years. Nearly three-fifths of those surveyed say that increasing competition from lower-paid workers around the world will keep living standards for average Americans from growing as fast as they did in the past.