“The labor movement,” Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez told delegates to the 2013 AFL-CIO Convention in Los Angeles this morning, “is one of the greatest forces for middle-class economic security."

An economy that grows from the middle out can only be achieved if we continue to have a dynamic and empowered labor movement in America.

Welcome to the 2013 AFL-CIO Convention live blog. Comments will appear after moderation. See our comment guidelines here. You can participate in the discussion from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. PDT (11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. EDT).

Check out the live blog after the jump. 

Bankruptcy laws are rigged against working people. Employers, corporations and lenders often exploit these laws to weaken our retirement security, cut health care and leave young workers saddled with student loan debt, without the prospect of a good job or the ability to discharge the debt through bankruptcy. 

Today, the AFL-CIO passed a convention resolution addressing the need to reform our country's bankruptcy laws to better shield workers from harm in the form of broken pension and health care promises and to diminish economic hardship that comes from these bankruptcies. 

Delegates focused on shared prosperity, good jobs and raising wages, as the AFL-CIO 2013 Convention entered its third day in Los Angeles. 

The three working family economics resolutions that won approval this morning center on the labor movement’s vision of shared prosperity here and around the globe, the steps needed to create good jobs, economic security and tax fairness and three dozen specific actions to raise wages and put more money into workers’ pockets.

A safe job is a fundamental workers' right. It doesn't matter whether you work in a coal mine, a classroom, a construction site, a hospital or a garment factory in Bangladesh or China, every worker should be able to go to their job and return home safely at the end of the day. 

AFL-CIO delegates took on other initiatives by passing the following resolutions at the AFL-CIO Convention in Los Angeles today.

If Texas working families and their unions are going to turn red, right-wing, "right to work" for less Texas blue and replace the corporate-beholden, anti-union politicians with lawmakers who will respect the rights of workers, "We'll have to do it one [state] House district at a time," Richard Shaw, secretary-treasurer of the Harris County (Texas) AFL-CIO Council, told participants at the Winning for Texas Workers action session at the AFL-CIO 2013 Convention this afternoon.

Today, the AFL-CIO came out strongly in favor of reforms to the U.S. prison system that would have significant benefits to communities, people of color, correctional employees and inmates who are trying to reform their lives and rejoin society. In particular, the federation criticized the privatized prison industry that, in the name of bigger corporate profits, mistreats workers, creates inhumane conditions for prisoners and incentivizes the incarceration of more and more of America's citizens in order to make the wealthiest Americans more profits.

The years-long assault on workers’ and voting rights at state and national levels by corporate special interests and their political allies means, says a resolution on political action approved this afternoon by delegates to the AFL-CIO 2013 Convention:

It is crucial that our political action maximize the potential for workers to organize and bargain collectively.

For those of you who can’t be here in Los Angeles for the AFL-CIO’s historic convention, we’re posting video highlights. Our Day 1 highlights include Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) crowd-rousing speech; the moving acceptance speech of Myrtle Wytbooi, winner of the George Meany–Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award; and a clip of a speech by Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, to the AFL-CIO 2013 Diversity Conference.  Click here to see all the videos.