Congratulations to everyone who poured blood, sweat and tears into this election. You have won for working families a great opportunity—and a great responsibility.

We have the real opportunity to turn around America and get our economy back on the right track. We are responsible for holding our elected leaders to the promises they made during their campaigns and providing the public support they need to make tough legislative choices on our behalf.

So thank you for all your hard work educating and mobilizing voters—and don't stop now.

Now we have to tackle the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Hardworking families are losing jobs, homes, health care, retirement savings and hope. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been committed to rescuing Wall Street—but almost nothing has been done to rescue Main Street.

Resuscitating our economy is going to require a fresh partnership among government, business, communities and working families. It will require immediate new stimulus efforts to jump-start our economy—restructuring mortgages to keep people in their homes, extending unemployment assistance for jobless workers, aiding states so they can continue to provide vital public services and putting a down payment on job-creating infrastructure investments. Then we'll need to grow those investments in schools, roads, bridges and clean renewable energy for sustained economic growth, re-regulate our financial markets and reform America's broken health care system so no one has to choose between food and medicine or between life-saving treatment and bankruptcy.

But no matter what else we do to put our economy back to work, we will not succeed unless we also restore workers’ freedom to bargain for a better life. To do that, we must enact the Employee Free Choice Act as the core of lasting economic recovery for working families.

The Employee Free Choice Act will level the playing field for corporations and workers who want to form and join unions. It will strengthen penalties for companies that coerce or intimidate employees who support the union; establish mediation and binding arbitration when the company and workers cannot agree on a first contract; and enable employees to form unions when a majority signs authorization cards.

Corporate front groups, industry associations and some large corporations have chosen to launch a massive campaign to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act rather than respecting workers' free choice about whether to form unions and bargain. Naming this their No. 1 priority, they have pledged to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on misleading and untrue ads and attack smears on members of Congress who support the legislation. They are desperate to preserve today's unfair system in which companies hold all the power. 

Count on this being one of the largest, foulest propaganda campaigns in the history of public policy.

America's unions—from the national level down to individual union members—are joining together to overcome the lies and distortions and win prompt passage of the Employee Free Choice Act to restore America's middle class.

Workers who belong to unions earn 30 percent more than nonunion workers. They are 59 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage and four times more likely to have pensions. So no one should be surprised that more than half of U.S. workers—nearly 60 million—say they would join a union right now if they could. But not enough will get the chance because today's company-dominated system allows corporations to block workers from deciding for themselves whether to form unions to bargain for a better life. Companies routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and even fire people who try to organize unions. This is an urgent crisis for workers, blocking their free will and their ability to improve their economic well-being.

The Employee Free Choice Act passed the U.S. House and won majority support in the Senate in 2007—but a Republican minority blocked passage with a filibuster. Today, a larger majority in both houses has committed to support the Employee Free Choice Act when it comes before Congress again. And our new president has pledged to sign it into law.

America's entire union movement is committed to passing the Employee Free Choice Act in 2009 and will fight, just like we fought for this election, to do so.

Look at what happened in Election 2008—unity we never witnessed before made historic change possible. Hope in the face of economic crisis fueled bigger, broader, more passionate participation in our democratic process. Commitment to put our country back on the right track created tens of thousands of new activists.

We have to keep that drive alive. We have to remain just as passionate and committed until we have truly turned around America. I urge you to join us. Start by adding your name to the Million-Member Mobilization in support of the Employee Free Choice Act by clicking here.