Hundreds of babies and toddlers from low-income families in the Green Bay, Wis., area will be happier and drier in the coming months, thanks to the 13,000 diapers collected by Brown County United Way, in partnership with the Greater Green Bay Labor Council Community Services Committee and 21 community partners. Dan Wadle, the AFL-CIO Community Services liaison, says:

It’s a case where there’s a lot of need in the community as far as with low-income families. It’s difficult to afford diapers.

Something as simple as a pair of “Cars” sneakers can make a huge difference in a family’s budget.  UAW Local 685 in Kokomo, Ind., handed out school supplies and shoes to more than 200 children Tuesday at its headquarters during the annual UAW giveaway, the  Kokomo Tribune reported .

We reported this week the federal minimum wage hasn't increased in three years . If the minimum wage increased with inflation, it would be $10.55, not $7.25 as it is today. In no state can a minimum wage employee working a 40-hour week afford a two-bedroom apartment. This is why the AFL-CIO is urging Congress to pass the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2012 . 

Today marks the third year minimum wage workers haven't seen a raise. While the price of just about everything else has skyrocketed (milk, eggs, health care, college), full-time minimum wage workers are barely making more than $15,000 a year. Here are 10 facts you need to know about the minimum wage. 

Anyone who has ever raised kids knows that in those early years, you can never have too many diapers. But for low-income families, the cost of keeping infants in an average of about a dozen diapers a day and toddlers in eight can be a major financial burden.

This week in Green Bay Wis., the Brown County United Way, in partnership with the  Greater Green Bay Labor Council Community Services Committee along with 21 community partners launched the first annual Brown County Diaper Drive.

There are responsible tax cuts—and then there are tax giveaways for the already really rich.

In discussions over extending the Bush tax cuts, Republicans propose massive tax giveaways for the wealthy while the middle- and lower-income families would pay slightly more, according  to a new analysis  by Citizens for Tax Justice ( CTJ ) and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ( ITEP ).

There's always a lot of noise on campaign trails about cutting taxes. But as the Economic Policy Institute ( EPI ) points out, the real question is: Whose taxes? 

A new report by EPI finds that since 1995, the wealthiest of the wealthy in this country have gotten far more tax breaks than those in the middle- and lower-income brackets, with the average effective federal tax rates falling more than 9 percentage points for the top 0.01 percent of households and more than 6 percentage points for the remaining households in the top 1 percent. Effective tax rates also have fallen for households between the 20th and 99th percentile, but by less than 3 percentage points.

The following is by John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. Read the full version of his column is at L&M Partnership .

The U.S. Census Bureau released new measures of poverty in November. According to the New York Times , “All told 100 million people – one in three Americans – either live in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.”

How appropriate. We’re drowning in rain here in the nation’s capital, while outside the Beltway, America’s working families are drowning in one disastrous economic wave after another. A few recent nuggets.

Workers at the top of the wage scale are more than four times more likely to have paid sick days than workers toiling near the bottom wage scale, says a new Economic Policy Institute ( EPI ) Economic Snapshot .