The budget that President Obama released today is drawing intense criticism for its cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called those cuts “wrong and indefensible.”

A president’s budget is more than just numbers. It is a profoundly moral document. We believe cutting Social Security benefits and shifting costs to Medicare beneficiaries—while exempting corporate America from shared sacrifice—is wrong and indefensible. 

Not that there was much choice, but today the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS's) Board of Governors announced it will not end Saturday mail delivery.

Earlier this year, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said he would end Saturday delivery in August. Congress last month passed government funding legislation that specifically barred the USPS from going to five-day delivery. But up until today’s announcement, the USPS hadn’t backed away from its plans.

Talk about team work. House and Senate Republicans have come together with a unique new strategy to attack workers’ rights and shut down the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). And their corporate sponsors are loving it.

The more than 14,000 waterfront workers at 15 East and Gulf Coast ports have ratified a new six-year master agreement between the Longshoremen (ILA) and the port employer group the United States Maritime Alliance.

While more than 2 million people signed a petition that was delivered to President Obama today urging him not to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid and to abandon a "chained" CPI formula, hundreds more have left photo messages for the president. 

President Obama will hear a straightforward and simple message from more than 2 million people today responding to reports that his budget will include cuts to Social Security and Medicare:

The 'Chained' CPI is a benefit cut to a program that does not contribute to the deficit. Do not barter it away in the name of deficit reduction. Stand strongly against all cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

U.S. lawmakers and policymakers who are pushing extreme austerity measures and spending cuts over job-creating investments as the magic path to economic stability should take a long hard look at what’s happened to the nations of the European Union (EU) that have imposed strict fiscal austerity policies.  Unemployment has soared, according to a new report on the EU labor market from the International Labor Organization (ILO).

There are more than 10 million more jobless people in Europe now than at the start of the crisis. There are now more than 26 million Europeans without jobs, with young and low-skilled workers being the hardest hit.

This is an excerpt from “Public Schools, Private Agenda: Parent Revolution,” by Gary Cohn of Frying Pan News.

At  first glance, it is one of the nation’s hottest new education-reform movements, a seemingly populist crusade to empower poor parents and fix failing public schools. But a closer examination reveals that the “parent-trigger” movement is being heavily financed by the conservative Walton Family Foundation, one of the nation’s largest and most strident anti-union organizations, a Frying Pan News investigation has shown.

This is a cross-post, by Aruna Jain, from Working America's blog Main Street.

As legislation to raise the minimum wage to $9.95 makes its way through the Minnesota Legislature, Rep. Jason Metsa (D) is taking up Working America’s challenge to live on Minnesota’s current minimum wage for five days.

More than 4,000 Georgia education workers who have been wrongfully denied unemployment insurance benefits since a 2011 ruling by the state’s labor commissioner will collect more than $8 million in back payments.