Today I announced my retirement as Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU and Chair of Change to Win. The 38 years I have spent as a rank and file activist, leader and officer with SEIU have been full of challenges and opportunities to use my passion, talents and skills to make a difference...

Corporate, anti-worker, and anti-immigrant interests have developed the perfect system to cripple our democracy and hold our economy hostage.

1. Pick an issue. Wall Street reform, our broken immigration system, our jobs crisis, or climate change.

2. Use distortions and blatant lies to distract, scare and divide the...

To commemorate Women's History Month, the Roosevelt Institute's New Deal 2.0 blog asked me to reflect on past accomplishments and explore today's key challenges as part of its ongoing 'Feminomics' series. Here's my take on what women have achieved through the health care victory and what...

The battle lines are drawn. Troops of bank lobbyists surround Capitol Hill. They have their marching orders from Wall Street: No retreat until financial reform is dead.

Lloyd Blankfein and the rest of the Wall Street CEOs like the world the way it is. They get rich and the...

With Senator Evan Bayh's surprise announcement that he would not seek reelection because of "too much partisanship and not enough progress" this week, there's a Greek chorus decrying the inability of the parties to work together as evidence of a failed system. His abdication was widely read as proof positive...

Imagine going to the grocery store. You stop in to get your milk, your bread and eggs. But something is different this time. While buying your breakfast for the next morning, you get a nonstop sales pitch for the upcoming elections. Down one aisle is a TV telling you who...

This morning, the President of the US Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donohue, will stand up in front of a bank of microphones, captains of industries, and leaders from the purportedly 300,000-member organization of which he serves as titular head. In his annual "State of American Business" address, Donohue will likely...

Our jobs crisis didn’t happen overnight. And it didn’t happen by accident.

We’re paying the price for a system that for too long valued wealth over work, ignored the warning signs of crisis, and failed to meet the new challenges of the 21st century.

80 years...

For years, Republicans have attacked women's health care policy every chance they have gotten. They’ve voted against protecting domestic violence victims from being denied health insurance. They’ve voted to allow insurance companies to deny us coverage for life-saving mammograms. They’ve voted to deny our children basic health coverage. They’ve voted...

President Obama’s bold leadership and the swift action by congressional leaders last spring likely staved off a global economic depression. Because of that work, our economy is on the path to growth and hundreds of thousands of jobs have been saved.

But we are not out of the woods...

The financial section of the newspaper is starting to read like the script for a far-fetched crime movie. A group of villains hatch a plot to steal trillions of dollars from unsuspecting Americans. They drive the country into economic chaos, funnel money from families and small businesses into their own...

In just a few hours, the Senate Finance Committee has an opportunity to pick up where the House of Representatives and Senate HELP Committee began, and include in their bill a strong public health insurance option. Only one thing stands in their way: themselves.

Since the beginning of this debate,...

To find the "whodunnit" of our current economic crisis, look no further than the corporate boardroom.

Far from serving as checks-and-balances, today's corporate directors are under thumbs of the CEOs who selected them. With unquestioned power and ever increasing arrogance, CEOs can take unnecessary risks, hide...

Our economy is transforming. Bailouts to big banks and shameless corporate greed have left us with a faltering economy, a weak job market and crumbling financial system that has made workers more vulnerable than ever. In order to put workers back on the path of prosperity, we need to build...

With news that unemployment claims have reached a 26-year high and Congress' continuing failure to reach a compromise to save millions of jobs and America's auto industry - the need for a strong economic recovery program couldn't be greater. We can no longer stand by and watch our...

For a country deeply divided by party affiliation, job title, religion, and even ethnicity these days, President Bush's last State of the Union Address produced a fairly uniform response from pundits, politicians and the public: change is coming, and not a moment too soon. 

The message couldn't have been clearer...

Insinuation and hyperbole seem to be part and parcel of today's campaigning. But to suggest, as the New York Times recently did, that John Edwards' work on poverty is anything less than honorable is just plain wrong. Worse than that, it's insulting to the workers around the country he's...

"Will Paula Deen be the next Kathie Lee Gifford?"

That's what the Washington Post's Reliable Source asked yesterday when the Food Network's Southern belle came to the Smithsonian to promote her new book, It Ain't All About the Cooking.

It's a great question to ask of Deen, famous for...

We are undergoing a moment of immense economic transformation. The global economy and rapidly changing technology are profoundly shifting our industries and the way we live.

A century ago, America was amidst the industrial revolution, another moment of great economic expansion, but like today, many workers weren't seeing the benefits....