With the U.S. economy sputtering toward recession, working women and their families will feel more pain than in past downturns.

According to a report by the congressional Joint Economic Committee, women are now working in jobs and industries that are more likely to lay off workers than they were in most previous recessions:

In recessions prior to 2001, women could buffer family incomes against male unemployment because they did not experience sharp job losses. However, this changed in the 2001 recession as women lost jobs on par with men in the industries that lost the most jobs.

For seven and a half years, the Bush administration has delayed and sometimes just refused to act on workplace safety and health rules that could save lives and prevent serious injuries. Had the administration acted on those stalled rules, it may have prevented the deaths of 13 workers in a Georgia sugar plant explosion in February and the more than a dozen crane accident deaths this year in New York City, Las Vegas, Miami and Houston.

Now, with time running out on the Bush White House, it is fast-tracking a secretly written rule—long sought by the business community—that could increase workers' exposure to dangerous chemicals and toxic substances on the job and tie the hands of future administrations trying to improve workplace safety.

Bandages may work OK for scraped knees, but as Working America members and union activists in Minnesota told Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) today, the nation’s broken health care system needs serious and comprehensive reform—not a “Bandage Solution."

The activists marched to Coleman's St. Paul office and at a press conference outside the office delivered a long roll of “No Bandage Solution” petitions strung together by colorful bandages and signed by more than 23,000 Working America members in Minnesota.

The Letter Carriers (NALC) union has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president.

More than 8,000 delegates at the NALC Biennial Convention voted unanimously to endorse Obama and mobilize the union’s more than 300,000 members to help elect him and other working family-friendly candidates.

Obama’s name was presented to the convention for the endorsement vote by Sen. Hillary Clinton, whom the NALC endorsed in September of last year.

.

In key states around the country, the union vote will make the difference this fall. As part of the Labor 2008 program, the largest union voter mobilization in history, union volunteers are working hard to educate other members about why they support Sen. Barack Obama and intend to elect a pro-working family Congress this fall.

Worksite leafleting is just one of the ways Colorado union members communicate with fellow members about Obama’s record of supporting working families, says Phil Hayes, Labor 2008 state director. Last week, SMWIA Local 9 President Scott Jorgensen and NATCA staffer Chris McKeever spent hours at Denver construction sites talking to IBEW, SMWIA and UA members, Hayes reports.

Bandages may work OK for scraped knees, but as Working America members and union activists in Minnesota told Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) today, the nation’s broken health care system needs serious and comprehensive reform—not a “Bandage Solution."

The activists marched to Coleman's St. Paul office and at a press conference outside the office delivered a long roll of “No Bandage Solution”petitions strung together by colorful bandages and signed by more than 23,000 Working America members in Minnesota.

Transafrica Forum's Mwiza Munthali

Nearly 100 trade unionists and other worker justice activists marched outside Zimbabwe's embassy in Washington, D.C., yesterday demanding fair and free elections and an end to government-sponsored violence against opponents.

The demonstration was sponsored by the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Transafrica Forum, the AFL-CIO and several other groups.

Members of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party have waged a violent and deadly national campaign of intimidation, with union members as major targets, to ensure he remains in power. Mugabe has ruled the country since 1980.

The Transportation Communications Union (TCU/IAM) has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president.

In the announcement, Robert Scardelletti, president of the TCU/IAM, pledged to mobilize the 55,000-member union behind Obama and a pro-working family Congress.

Scardelletti said that on wages, health care, taxes, Social Security, worker safety and particularly the issues important to transportation industry workers, there’s no comparison between the candidates.

Obama supports workers and will fight for them, while Sen. John McCain will take the country in the wrong direction, Scardelletti said.

In 2009, a new president and many new members of Congress will come into office—and they’ll face both big problems and powerful resistance to solve them. How can we pass good policy and improve the lives of working families?

At “The Coming Social Democratic Moment,” a session at the Netroots Nation conference in Austin, panelists agreed that no matter who wins this fall’s election, there’s an opportunity to really turn around the country and a need for progressives to organize and fight hard to ensure that we fix what’s wrong.

Elizabeth Jacobs is a sociologist who studies attitudes toward the economy and social programs. She notes that the last few years have seen rapid deterioration of objective circumstances around the issues that are at the heart of the progressive movement—a broken health care system, an economy that’s failing most people, a collapsing housing market and unsustainable energy prices.

Health care is guaranteed to be at the forefront of the 2008 election, and, more importantly, the fight to build a better health care system will be one of the toughest fights when a new administration takes over in 2009.

Bloggers, experts and activists are using online tools in innovative ways to make sure we can win high-quality health care for all. At Netroots Nation, some of the people leading this effort took part in an important panel, Emerging Trends in Healthcare Online.

Melinda Gibson works for Health Care for America Now, a coalition of more than 80 groups working to build a grassroots movement to mobilize voters around health care during, and after, the election. HCAN has both an on-the-ground component and an online effort.