When Republican candidates ask Americans if they’re better off than they were four years ago when President Obama was elected, here’s what working people will be thinking about, according to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: Former President George W. Bush lost U.S. jobs during a good economy. Obama has created jobs during the disastrous economy he inherited.

Trumka, questioned on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program this morning by Peter Wallsten of The Washington Post and Melanie Trottman of the Wall Street Journal, challenged viewers to imagine how improved the economy could be today if Republicans in Congress had worked with Obama on job creation rather than pursuing their stated top priority of making him a one-term president.

A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute teamed up on a blunt op-ed in today's Washington Post, which is quite a stunner considering their establishment credentials.

"Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem" is the title.

Mike Matthews, president of the Kanawha Valley (W.Va.) Labor Council, knows why more and more people are taking to the streets and speaking out against Big Banks, Wall Street and congressional Republicans who are standing in the way of job creation.

When Marlene Quinn first saw an ad from an anti-labor group pop up on her TV screen, she was astonished—and enraged. Quinn, whose great-granddaughter, Zoey, was rescued by firefighters who responded to a house fire, is an ardent opponent of Issue 2, the ballot measure that would essentially ratify Ohio’s anti-labor bill, S.B. 5, ravaging the collective bargaining rights of the state’s public employees. If the ballot measure fails to pass on Nov. 8, S.B. 5 is dead.

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.”

The 4,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) workers who lost two weeks of pay when they were furloughed during the Republican shutdown of the FAA, will receive back pay, the agency announced Friday.

If you’re looking to get a little fired up to get out the vote or just want to send some good vibes Wisconsin’s way, where voters on Tuesday hope to take down six of Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) closest state Senate allies, take a look and listen to this video from the all-union Madison blues band Bonobo Secret Handshake.

AFL-CIO union members and allies will engage in a fall America Wants to Work mobilization to move the national debate from the right wing’s manufactured debt crisis to the nation’s real crisis: jobs.

The 10,000 volunteers knocking on doors and making phone calls to get out Wisconsin voters for the Aug. 9 recall elections have now talked with more than a million potential voters.  Working familes initiated the recall of six Republican lawmakers who voted to kill collective bargaining for the state’s public employees.