By John J. Sweeney

Read more from President Sweeney.

Why is the AFL-CIO, created to represent workers on the job, launching its most aggressive midterm election voter education and mobilization campaign?

For one reason: The Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress have created an economy that is strangling working families and squeezing the life out of America’s middle class.

• Wages and salaries make up the smallest part of the economy since the government began keeping records in 1947.
• America's workers have suffered a generation-long stagnation in wages—but productivity has risen steadily. Real median earnings for men working full-time and year-round were lower in 2005 than in 1973.
• The typical family’s real income today is nearly $1,300 less than in 2000.
• But health care, fuel, housing and other costs are soaring.
• Five million more people are in poverty today than in 2000, including 1 million more children. The poverty rate for black children hit a disgraceful 34.5 percent in 2005.
• Five million people have lost health insurance coverage since 2005. Last year, 46.6 million people had no health insurance.
• This economy is barely generating enough new jobs to keep up with population growth—the worst labor market performance ever at this stage in an economic recovery.
• The economy is growing only at the top and is being fueled by unsustainable household debt, not rising wages.
• By lunchtime in one day, a major corporate CEO has made as much money as a minimum wage worker makes all year.
• The Republican-controlled Congress has rubber-stamped President Bush’s toxic economic initiatives. It has refused for 10 years to raise the minimum wage without attacks on workers’ rights and the 40-hour week.
• Bush’s National Labor Relations Board is poised to rob millions of workers of their right to union membership by reclassifying them as “supervisors”—and refuses even to hear oral arguments in these critical cases.

Those are the injuries. Here’s the insult: President Bush continues crowing to the media that our economy is “solid and strong” and “creating real benefits for America’s workers and families.”

Economic reality and the anti-worker drive created by the Bush administration and Republican congressional leaders are fueling working families’ political energy this year. America’s working families deserve better, and we’re putting our blood, sweat, tears and action into winning it.