A new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that two Missouri paycheck deception bills are not necessary to protect workers and they would limit the free speech and political spending of unions and organized workers, while allowing unlimited corporate spending on political causes. 

The AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce have been working together to find common ground on comprehensive immigration reform. This morning, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Chamber of Commerce President Thomas J. Donohue released this statement on the groups’ shared immigration reform principles.  

The United States will always be a nation of immigrants who have contributed greatly to the vitality, diversity and creativity of American life. Yet, like the rest of America’s immigration system, the mechanisms for evaluating our labor market needs and admitting foreign workers—as well as recruiting U.S. workers—for temporary and permanent jobs are broken or non-existent. Current immigration policies are rigid, cumbersome and inefficient. What is needed is the creation of a professional bureau in a federal executive agency to inform Congress and the public about these issues together with a system that provides for lesser-skilled visas that respond to employers’ needs while protecting the wages and working conditions of lesser-skilled workers—foreign or domestic. Current efforts at comprehensive immigration reform present a unique and historic opportunity for American workers and businesses to work together to fix this aspect of the badly broken system.

Donna Gatehouse, who blogs at DemocraticDiva and elsewhere on all things Arizona, sends us this.

Arizona, as the pithy Jon Stewart put it a while back, is the “meth lab of democracy.” The Grand Canyon State has achieved international notoriety for legalizing guns in bars, SB1070 [anti-immigrant legislation], a Birther Bill, and of course, the antics of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, among other things.

In a pre-emptive strike for the truth yesterday, economic activists and patriotic millionaires, “prebutted” today’s speech by U.S. Chamber Commerce President Tom Donohue outlining the 1%’s so-called jobs agenda. Hundreds rallied outside the Chamber’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., yesterday before marching down H Street.

This is a cross-post by Christy Setzer from U.S. Chamber Watch.

Dragging a little today? Desperately trying to focus on work while wishing you were still on a beach? Just be glad you don’t work for a member company of the U.S. Chamber of Congress—you might not have gotten that vacation at all.

The nation needs to spend $1.7 trillion by 2020 to shore up its infrastructure, or it could lose more than 876,000 jobs, and hold back the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth by $3.1 trillion in the next nine years, according to a new report by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) proposed a modest, common-sense rule to remove roadblocks for workers who want to vote on whether to form a union. But from the way the Chamber of Commerce and some Republicans are responding, it’s like the sky is falling—kind of like Chicken Little on steroids–with a message that’s become a broken record.

More than 1,000 nurses will be joined by union and community allies in a rally outside the White House, Chamber of Commerce and Congress tomorrow to call for a new agenda to heal the nation.

Because of the activism by young people like the 10,000 environmental Power Shift activists who traveled to Washington, D.C., to the tell Congress it’s time to force the corporate polluters to pay up and clean up, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says:

We’re moving past the same-old tired debates and toward jobs and a clean, green future.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) assault on fire fighters and other public employees—with the support of the Florida Chamber of Commerce—isn’t going over well with voters.