Click HERE to find your State legislator.

Next to voting on Election Day, the most important and powerful political action that union members can take is to directly contact your legislators. We need to be present, visible, and stay on their radar to influence decisions on our pensions, our health care, our contracts, and budgets. 

Every Union Member should contact their elected representatives! Every Local 1036 member in state, county and local government can contact their legislators for support during bargaining and during difficult budget situations. 

Right now, there is legislation pending that would alter pension and health benefits for ALL public workers at ALL levels of government. Take action NOW to call your Senate and Assembly representatives to express our opposition to these bills.  

It is critical that Union members express our political positions directly to our legislators.  

Take further action! 

• Contact your Congressional Representative
• Contact your US Senator

CWA-COPE is the political action committee for CWA members, their families and retirees. The COPE program educates, trains and mobilizes union families to encourage participation in the political process. Through COPE, CWA members express their voice in politics and on policy issues that affect their lives.

COPE is funded through voluntary payroll deductions from union members. CWA can only use voluntary dollars to contribute to worker-friendly candidates. COPE funds also support worker education about candidates and their positions on issues that affect working families like healthcare, pensions, union organizing, and working conditions.

Watch the new CWA TV spot highlighting public workers. 

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This is a cross-post from AFL-CIO Blog and a report from the Campaign for American Progress. David Madland and Nick Bunker parse the latest figures to show states with weak unions also share another trait—a weak middle class. 

New state income data released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau shows the importance of unions to boosting incomes for all middle-class households—union and nonunion alike. The 2010 income data makes it clear that strong unions are a critical factor in creating a middle-class society. Restoring the strength of unions would go a long way toward rebuilding the middle class.

The states with the lowest percentage of workers in unions—North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas—all have relatively weak middle classes. In each of these states, the share of income going to the middle class (the middle 60 percent of the population by income) is below the national average, according to Census Bureau figures.

Read the full blog post or the full report.

The union movement is in a fight for its life and the other side is determined to take away our right to exist, Vice President Joe Biden told a gathering of working families. Speaking at a Labor Day rally yesterday in Cincinnati, Biden said unions are the only non-governmental power with the power and capacity to stop the onslaught against the middle class. 

http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/09/06/biden-only-unions-can-stop-middle-class-onslaught/