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… and in the community. As an original member, and later president, of the Electrical Workers Minority Caucus, Sparks sought to ensure that all workers could fully participate in their union.  Her work provided education, training and understanding that would open a path for women and people of color in union leadership … family, Sparks grew up under the oppressive Jim Crow laws of the segregated South and from childhood was determined to help create a more egalitarian society. Sparks, who began working at an early age at a poultry processing plant where she …

… as chair of the AFL-CIO Political Committee, but he has always spearheaded organizing, too. He has been the first to embrace new visions and new ideas—he co-founded the Economic Policy Institute, threw his passion into health care reform … helping drive its phenomenal growth and success. He also played a major role in stopping President George W. Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security. McEntee never shrinks from a challenge or a fight for working families. But he deserves equal … Memphis sanitation workers to assert “I Am a Man”; the union that virtually trademarked the struggle for dignity for all work and just rewards for all workers; and the union that has enabled city, county and state workers to turn government jobs …

… The economy of recent years has been brutal to America’s workers. Between 1973 and 2010, productivity nearly doubled, while wages stagnated—real hourly wages for … bargaining has always been the most effective antidote to inequality and injustice. But over the last several decades, the right to bargain collectively also has been under increasing political attack. Employer opposition to worker organizing … benefits and working conditions. Through the strength of their collective voices, unionized workers have improved their work environments and have increased productivity and efficiency, thereby promoting job growth. Workers know that only by …

… The economic policies that led to the financial crash of 2008 and the subsequent Great Recession should have been permanently discredited by their epic … These included the abandonment of full employment in favor of fighting inflation, the prolonged attack on workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively with their employers, the erosion of the minimum wage and other labor protections … somewhere on U.S. territory to one of maximizing the competitiveness and prosperity of the human beings who live and work in America. First, if we want to be competitive with Germany and China in the 21st century, we will need trillions of …

… Republicans are holding the middle class hostage to their demands on behalf of the richest 2 percent of Americans.  There can be no excuse for giving in to their demands to … tax cuts, blocking extension of federal unemployment benefits, refusing to replace the payroll tax cut with the Make Work Pay tax credit, shutting down the federal government and manufacturing a political crisis by refusing to raise the debt … we have to stop catering to the demands of the richest 2 percent of Americans. We have to prioritize our needs, and right now America’s top three needs are jobs, jobs and jobs. The first year of across-the-board sequestration cuts that were …