More than 200 union lawyers are prepared to combat any efforts to intimidate voters or suppress the vote and to ensure that everyone’s right to vote is protected between now (early voting is under way in many states) and Election Day.

The members of the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee (LCC)—union lawyers in law firms and union legal departments—are “on the front lines to protect the votes of working families,” said AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker in a telephone press conference today.

The future of the union movement, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler told some 600 members of the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee (LCC), depends on showing the public that through our actions on the ground we are a:

broad, inclusive, innovative worker-driven organization....We need to build a broader, stronger, more effective movement for all working people—union and nonunion. That means organizing. It means advocacy. It means grassroots mobilization.

The AFL-CIO Legal Department has announced a new fellowship opportunity for recent law school graduates. The one-year fellowship will begin in September 2012.

The attempts to blame the nation’s economic mess on teachers, firefighters, nurses and other public employees provide a great opportunity for working people to regain the American Dream, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said this week.