After nearly a month of mediated negotiations, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) management held a news conference this week to proclaim it hadn’t budged an inch from its contract proposals that forced some 2,500 workers to strike last month. If an agreement isn’t reached soon, union officials say workers may be forced to hit the picket lines Monday morning.

The budget that President Obama released today is drawing intense criticism for its cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called those cuts “wrong and indefensible.”

A president’s budget is more than just numbers. It is a profoundly moral document. We believe cutting Social Security benefits and shifting costs to Medicare beneficiaries—while exempting corporate America from shared sacrifice—is wrong and indefensible. 

More than 1,500 people rallied Tuesday on Capitol Hill in support of working families and to tell Congress not to make any benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They also told Congress to close tax loopholes for big corporations and the wealthiest 2% and to prevent the sequester from going into effect and harming the country. Throughout the rally, working families spoke with a unified voice calling for "jobs, not cuts."

In March 2012, the AFT helped lead a public-private partnership to help struggling McDowell County, W.Va., and the participants were hopeful that things could be turned around economically and educationally. A year later, the Reconnecting McDowell project has begun to show that investment in communities can change people's lives.

The first union for secretaries, 9to5, found a way to turn National Secretary's Day on its head in 1973, with the slogan "Raises, Not Roses," during a day of protest.

"We were about business, we were serious workers and you couldn't buy us off anymore," says Karen Nussbaum, one of the founders of 9to5, in an interview with PBS MAKERS, a series covering women who lead and trailblaze.

Nussbaum is now the executive director of Working America, a community affiliate of the AFL-CIO.

Watch the first of Nussbaum's interviews below:

The women and men—mostly women—who care for our aging and ill relatives, providing both physical and emotional support, sometimes for many years, are among a workforce that has long been underpaid, overlooked and, all-too-often, looked down upon. Yet these home health aides, personal care assistants and domestic workers toil in occupations described by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as among the fastest growing in the United States.

So what does this say about us as a nation?

Machinists (IAM) District 8 in Joliet, Ill., and Caterpillar Inc. reached a tentative contract agreement late Tuesday and members are now voting on whether to ratify it. Workers have been on strike against the heavy equipment maker since May 1.

The proposed six-year contract contains many improvements over previous offers, said District 8 Business Representative Steve Jones.

After reviewing unilateral changes Georgia made to its unemployment insurance (UI) rules, the U.S. Department of Labor has declared that the state has no “adequate statutory basis” for denying UI benefits to seasonal employees who work for private contractors providing services to schools. The strongly-worded guidance to Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler came in an Aug. 2 letter obtained by the Atlanta Constitution Journal and publicized in their front page story: State ordered to reverse itself on some unemployment claims.

We can strengthen the U.S. economy and invest in our nation's infrastructure and workers. A long-term plan for growth is needed, and it certainly doesn't involve austerity. 

Yale University Professor Jacob Hacker and Roosevelt Institute Founder Nathaniel Loewentheil today released their new paper, Prosperity Economics: Building an Economy for All, at the Economic Policy Institute. This bold paper provides a comprehensive plan to grow our nation’s economy in a way that works for everyone. 

No doubt these are tough times for working families and their unions. This weekend, Bill Moyers speaks about the unbridled influence of Big Business and its effects on the labor movement with two labor activists who have been part of the movement for many years.

Bill Fletcher Jr., AFGE Field Services and Education Director and author of the forthcoming book, They’re Bankrupting us—and 20 Other Myths About Unions, and Stephen Lerner, who worked with AFL-CIO President Emeritus John Sweeney at SEIU to create that union’s Justice for Janitors movement, will be on the PBS show “Moyers & Company.”

Check local listings here.