In July, Patriot Coal filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York. Among the reasons for Patriot’s financial difficulties were the huge legacy costs related to health care benefits and pensions owed to retirees and widows of former employees. The company's intended goal, it seems, according to the Mine Workers (UMWA), is to get out of obligations to the miners that worked hard for decades, often doing significant damage to their own health.

Social Security is our most important family protection program that works not just for retirees, but also for people with disabilities and children who've lost a working parent. It's a promise for all generations. People pay for this benefit throughout their working lives. Social Security is immensely popular with voters across the political spectrum, which is why those who would like to dismantle the program consistently distort the facts and falsely claim the program is "bankrupt." It's important for working people to know the truth about the program and push back against Social Security myths and lies and fight for more, not less retirement security.

Here are six Social Security facts you need to know:

What's at stake for working families in the November elections? Try health care, retirement security and jobs, to name a few. Just ask Travis Turner's mom, who is so grateful for the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act made it possible for her son Travis, who has a rare form of liver cancer, to get back on his father's health insurance after he was kicked off for exceeding a lifetime limit. Mitt Romney plans to overturn the health care law, which helped the Turner family and millions of others receive health care. 

Watch the video, "AFL-CIO: What's at Stake in the November 2012 Elections?" and click here to share on Facebook. 

Barbara J. Easterling is president of the Alliance for Retired Americans. She was previously the secretary-treasurer of the Communications Workers of America.  

As we near Labor Day, I want to encourage you to help younger generations better understand why labor unions are so important. Too many people either know very little about unions or only know what politicians and Fox News tell them.

This is a cross-post from Huffington Post by Harold Schaitberger, general president of  the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF). 

There's an oft repeated myth being fed by many that claims the defined benefit pension plans available to most public employees are going bankrupt.

While a new report by the Pew Center for the States feeds those myths, Pew's research paints a false picture of pensions. Here are five oft-peddled myths about public pensions followed by the facts.

This is a cross-post from The Huffington Post.

On Dec. 18, a dozen retirees, men and women in their 60s, 70s, even 80s, began occupying a median strip along Route 33 in front of the closed Century Aluminum smelter in Ravenswood, W.Va. In tents and under tarps, a small group stays overnight, despite hypertension, arthritis and other old age ailments. One has suffered a stroke.

AFL-CIO Field Communications staffer Cathy Sherwin sends us this report.

When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker headed over to Iowa to raise money for the right-wing special interest group, the Heritage Foundation, union members and Occupy Des Moines protesters were there to greet him. A crowd of more than 200 filled the sidewalk outside the fundraiser: teachers and jobless Iowans, construction workers and retirees, community activists and families with children.

Not that we want to skew the Transport Workers (TWU) contest for worst governor, but here’s a doozy about one of the contest’s nominees.

Seems Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a government-bashing, tea party follower is paying just $30 a month for health care—state taxpayers are covering the rest. Yet Scott easily handed over $73 million of his own cash to get elected.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner’s proposed budget is ”tantamount to a form of class warfare,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). If enacted, “it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.

Today as we hear that Social Security cuts may be on the table in the federal budget deficit talks, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other union and progressive leaders, including House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, have come out strongly in opposition to such moves. Trumka says that “at a time when retirement security remains an elusive goal for most Americans, cuts to Social Security benefits – in whatever form they take – should not be on the table.