Looking for something to do before you go out to the Labor Day picnic? The VERSUS TV network is honoring America's workers and sportsmen and sportswomen with its second annual "Escape to the Wild" Labor Day marathon Sept. 1, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. EST.

"Escape to the Wild" is the union-sponsored television series of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP), which airs on VERSUS. The show rewards members of AFL-CIO unions with a hunting or fishing trips of a lifetime. The show is supported by the Union Sportsmen’s Alliance (USA), a joint venture of the TRCP and 21 unions to promote conservation and access for hunters and anglers.

As media pundits have noted, Sen. Barack Obama's selection of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden adds many years of foreign policy experience to the ticket.

Less well-known is Biden's long support for working families and their unions. America's union movement, Biden has said, is

the only thing that keeps the barbarians at the gate.

But he doesn't stop there.

There is a middle class in this country for one reason and only one reason: the union movement.

Before you head off to the hot dogs and veggie burgers at the backyard barbecue this weekend (because who can afford the gas money to drive anywhere?), take a minute to celebrate Labor Day in a way that honors America's working women and men.

1. Send a Labor Day e-card. Click here. (See how easy it is to take action?)

2. Help pass the Employee Free Choice Act by signing a petition here.

3. Get set to walk. What better way to mark Sen. John McCain's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Sept. 4 than by talking union-member to union-member about the important issues in this election? Stop by here to see video clips of union members describing why they'll be walking Sept. 4 and here to read why AFL-CIO President John Sweeney is urging union members to walk Sept. 4. If you're a union member, sign up to walk here.

Today, John McCain is arriving in Dayton, Ohio, to announce his running mate. He’s hoping to arrive to great fanfare and win over southern Ohioans. However, working families have a message: It’s time to take a closer look at McCain and his record.

The AFL-CIO is reaching out to 45,000 union activists in Ohio with a new video. The video gives some workers in Dayton and southern Ohio the chance to have their say on McCain and where he’d take the country. Here are just a few examples:

--Dale Herzog, St. Mary’s, Ohio

His ideas are just the same ones that Bush has had for eight years.

--Norma Schlosser, Kettering, Ohio

Everything that the American working man stands for, John McCain is against.

--Wesley Wells, Dayton, Ohio

Alison Omens, AFL-CIO media specialist, is in Denver this week at the Democratic National Convention and shares this post.

People from across the country have converged on Denver this week—there are women wearing red, white and blue hats that remind me of the old movie "Easter Parade," union members proudly displaying their union colors, politicians, leaders in the Democratic Party and even celebrities.

Here’s an early Labor Day present from the Bush administration—a nice little package of workplace chemicals, toxins and carcinogens all neatly wrapped up with a new proposed rule that Bush's Labor Department tried to keep secret earlier this summer.

The proposed rule, published today on the Federal Register's website, could increase workers’ exposure to dangerous chemicals and toxins and make it more difficult for the next administration to enact new safety rules. The rule's development was pushed by Bush political appointees over the objections of career health and safety professionals.

The Bush administration has just a few months left in office and faces the possibility that a Barack Obama administration would reverse many of the anti-worker policies and rules—including workplace safety—that have been a Bush hallmark and have been strongly backed by Big Business.

Are they kidding?

An adviser to Sen. John McCain made some revealing comments to the Dallas Morning News yesterday, showing the truly wrong-headed thinking that has shaped McCain’s health care policies.

John Goodman, who helped write McCain’s health care plan, said we can solve the problem of the uninsured by pretending they don’t exist. Really.

I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime….The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American as uninsured.

Workers holding a variety of jobs recently have joined AFL-CIO unions, including some 5,000 University of California (UC) postdoctoral researchers whose vote to join UAW was recently certified; shipyard workers in Mississippi who joined the Machinists (IAM); and workers at an Idaho Air Force base who chose the Electrical Workers (IBEW).

The new UAW members, known as "postdocs," submitted their union authorization cards to the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) in July, and last week, the board certified their choice of the Postdoctoral Researchers Organize/UAW (PRO/UAW).

The Bush administration’s ideology-driven neglect of New Orleans has left the city vulnerable again to a potentially devastating hurricane, three years after Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,800 people and left thousands homeless.

Residents of the Crescent City could be forced to evacuate again as Tropical Storm Gustav bears down on the Gulf Coast. Weather forecasters say Gustav could enter the Gulf of Mexico as a hurricane this weekend or early next week. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) has declared a state of emergency and said an evacuation could begin as early as Friday—three years to the day after Katrina devastated New Orleans.

Some 150 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees have a voice on the job after recently voting to join the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA). The air traffic control specialists are assigned to National Flight Services operations in Alaska and the weather unit of the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Herndon, Va.

These employees previously were represented by the National Association of Air Traffic Specialists (NAATS). In 2005, NAATS represented more than 2,000 air traffic controllers, but the FAA contracted out the work of all the union members except for these 150.

With $2 water, $7 pillows and $25 checked-bag fees, when you get on an airplane these days you expect to see signs on the emergency oxygen mask compartments, "In case of emergency, swipe credit card."

Passengers aren't the only ones fed up with being nickled, dimed and dollared by the airlines. The Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) and Air Line Pilots (ALPA) say if the airlines stopped handing out stock options, bonuses and perks and started making some sound business decisions, they'd have more money to pay the rising fuel costs—and maybe we could still get that pillow or water without shelling out.

Southeastern Missouri doesn't immediately come to mind as a hotbed of pro-worker political activism, but don't tell that to the nearly 600 union members and their families who turned out for the Cape Girardeau Central Trades and Labor Council's second annual labor picnic last weekend.

Council President Mark Baker, who also is a business rep for Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 702, says several local, state and national lawmakers and politicians joined the union families.

They all had a chance to hear Stewart Acuff, assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, discuss how critical this election is to winning passage of the Employee Free Choice Act and restoring the nation's middle class.

If you're in Denver for the Democratic National Convention, chances are you'll see billboards in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. They're part of a stepped-up public outreach campaign by workers' advocates and the union movement to broaden support for the bill and make it a central issue in the 2008 election.

The workers' advocacy group American Rights at Work is sponsoring ads for the legislation, including the billboards in Denver, full-page ads in Politico and USA Today, and expansive online advertising. This is a preview of a larger campaign to make the Employee Free Choice Act a reality for workers struggling in this economy. The bill would level the playing field for workers seeking to form unions.

Frank Snyder, Labor 2008 state director for Pennsylvania, reports on the massive political mobilization efforts of the state's union members.

Following the kickoff of the AFL-CIO Labor 2008 political mobilization program in March, the Pennsylvania labor movement has ordered nearly 1 million worksite leaflets for educating members about the issues that affect working families this election. As Labor Day nears, local union leaders, political coordinators and union activists are making member-to-member contact a priority.

As he distributed leaflets at the West Mifflin Port Authority garage in Pittsburgh, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 85 shop steward Ted Kielur pointed out:

When members see the union out talking about an issue, our members will then take the time to understand why. Our members trust the union and they trust other union members and that is why it is our job to get out and talk to them about important issues this election.

The AFL-CIO joined forces with The American Prospect at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this week for an economic forum, “All Boats Rising: Transforming the American Economy.” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka joined Paul Krugman, Robert Kuttner, Bennett College President Julianne Malveaux, Sens. Sherrod Brown and Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Donna Edwards in a discussion moderated by Ezra Klein and Harold Meyerson, both of The American Prospect.

The wide-ranging discussion touched on student loan debt, gas prices, trade agreements and other topics and consistently engaged both the immediate need for economic fixes and the long-term need to go beyond crisis thinking and change the balance of power between employers and working people in the United States.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney gave a high-profile and impassioned speech tonight at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, focusing on a top issue in the election: turning around our struggling economy.

Sweeney said 28 million active and retired union members and their families will mobilize this fall to elect Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden and help bring about the change America needs. Sweeney put the key issues of the campaign in the spotlight by highlighting the experiences of real people, members of working families whose lives are affected every day by the policies set in Washington.

Three workers appeared with Sweeney: Annette Lewis, a single mother whose son, Marcus, is starting 6th grade this fall; Steve Skvara, a retired steelworker, who lost his health care and saw his pension cut when his former company went bankrupt; and Dan Luevano, an electrical worker, who was fired for trying to form a union and bargain. They’ve all run up against the callous, corporate-friendly policies that George W. Bush and John McCain have imposed on the country.

Even though the nation’s economy has grown over the past few years, more of America's workers are living in poverty and household incomes are lower now than in 2000, the year before the 2001 recession.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported today that 816,000 more people—including 500,000 children—slipped into poverty between 2006 and 2007, raising the number of the poor to 37.3 million. The poverty rates for adults and children were both higher in 2007 than in 2000, when 31.6 million were poor.

Sen. Barack Obama says the Census report “confirms what America's struggling families already know”:

Over the past seven years, our economy has moved backwards. We have now lived through the first so-called economic "expansion" on record where typical families saw their incomes fall, and working-age households lost more than $2,000 from their paychecks.

Sen. Edward Kennedy consistently has been the strongest champion in Washington for workers and their unions, for policies that ensure the right of hardworking Americans to support themselves and their families.

Safety on the job. Affordable health care. Secure retirement. Pay that doesn't discriminate by gender or race. Access to education. Wages that support families. And the freedom to form unions without which these other struggles would be impossible.

Kennedy has led these battles and many more. His speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last night shows, once again, the passion behind his belief that America's working people embody what the world sees as the American Dream.

Watch it.

The leaders of the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions in the country spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last night, praising Sen. Barack Obama as the candidate we need to strengthen our country’s public education system.

AFT President Randi Weingarten and National Education Association (NEA) President Reg Weaver spoke proudly about Obama and Sen. Joe Biden’s commitment to education.

Weingarten said the AFT was ready to mobilize its members and fight alongside Obama—this fall and after the election—to make sure that America has the top-quality education system our families deserve.

The American Federation of Teachers is ready. Our number-one priority is, as it has always been, strengthening our public schools to better serve our students. Let’s do what we do best in our schools, in all of our schools. Barack Obama knows that teachers must be partners, not pawns, in federal education policy. And federal education policy must be about more than testing.

I ask you to join us in this quest. Because you believe that strong public schools are the cornerstones of our democracy. Because our aging population depends on future generations growing the economy. Because today’s students will be the caretakers of tomorrow’s environment, the sparks igniting our innovations, the tenders of our global relationships, the guardians of our prosperity and the creators of our arts. And simply because every child has the right to a fair and hopeful start in life.

A new report shows tax and accounting loopholes allow top executives and corporations to avoid paying about $20 billion a year in taxes. The report, Executive Excess 2008: How Average Taxpayers Subsidize Runaway Pay, released this week by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, calculates the annual cost to taxpayers of the five tax and accounting loopholes that encourage excessive executive pay. Even worse: Many large corporations are not paying any taxes at all.

The authors point out that the average CEO of a large U.S. company last year received $10.5 million in total compensation, 344 times the pay of the average U.S. worker. Thirty years ago, the ratio was 35:1. The top 50 private equity and hedge fund managers in 2007 pocketed an average of $588 million each, or 19,000 times as much as the average worker.