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.

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.”

State lawmakers have proposed some ugly—and often downright bizarro—legislation this year. Much of it has been anti-worker and anti-middle class, as was the case in Wisconsin and Ohio, where Republican-majority legislatures attacked public employees’ collective bargaining rights. Other legislation has been just as mean-spirited, and often really weird.

Speaking today to the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spelled out a comprehensive new vision for global trade and investment policies to create a global economy that is good for working people, the middle class and democracy—both here in the United States and around the world.