The AFL-CIO Executive Council called for a “high-wage” economic strategy, a new trade model and universal voter registration coupled with vigorous protection of the right to vote at its February meeting in Orlando, Fla., today. The Executive Council also addressed gender equality and commemorated the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington .

In its statement on economic strategy, the council says, “There is something fundamentally wrong with the U.S. economy,” that has resulted in “the stagnation of wages and incomes that has crippled the American middle class for more than a generation.”

Congress and the media paid homage to the agenda of the billionaires and Wall Street, with the manufactured “fiscal cliff” PR campaign frenzy that just ended. So now can we get back to the country’s priorities? Can we talk about jobs now?

Do you believe that unions and union members are too often ignored or wrongly portrayed when the media reports on the economy, business and jobs? Now you have the chance to change that and add a union member’s voice and perspective to the news. The folks who produce public radio's Marketplace want to hear from you.

Economist Simon Johnson, co-founder of the popular blog, The Baseline Scenario, joined us here today at the AFL-CIO for a discussion of his new book, White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt and Why It Matters to You. Co-authored with law professor James Kwak, White House Burning shows why the debasement of our political system in the 1980s and 1990s has produced a dysfunctional Congress that perpetuates our debt-based economy.

Johnson, a professor of entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, joined us in a Q&A on his findings and analysis of where we go from here.

An urgent e-mail from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is urging activists to tell their U.S. senators to oppose the cynically named JOBS Act, which some members are rushing through to deregulate Wall Street. Trumka says senators instead should support amendments that would make the bill less harmful to working families.

The bill, which could pass as early as Monday, encourages speculation and will destroy jobs by reducing investor confidence in small companies, Trumka says. The amendments to the bill in the INVEST in America Act of 2012, sponsored by Sens. Jack Reed, Mary Landrieu and Carl Levin, would reduce the JOBS Act’s damage to investors, pension funds and the U.S. economy.  It’s time for Congress to set aside the politics of the 1%, the old game of special favors for Wall Street, and turn to the business of real job creation, Trumka says.
Please urge your senators to oppose the JOBS Act and support the amendments in the INVEST in America Act. Click here now.

Watch CBS Phoenix affiliate KPHO reporter Elizabeth Erwin reveal the utter lack of effort the GOP majority in the Arizona state Legislature has put forth to create jobs.

More confirmation that the extremely rich are getting richer and those without jobs are suffering even more. In 2009 and 2010, the first year of the current “recovery,” the 1 percent captured 93 percent of U.S. income growth. Repeat: 93 percent of income growth went to the 1 percent.

Proving once again that the Republican leadership’s “jobs agenda” is just talk and no action, the New Hampshire House is set to vote on dozens of bills this week that are all about tea party-fueled attacks on New Hampshire families.

As we noted back in August, one of the groups facing the toughest jobs climate right now are young workers, those who are new to the job market or about to enter it.

At the Economic Policy Institute’s Snapshot Blog, Heidi Shierholz writes that although the 16-24 demographic has seen some improvement in recent months, employment numbers for this group of young people remains rather dismal.