The issue of race in this presidential campaign is one we talk around, or whisper about, or don't discuss publicly at all. Or, as with some McCain supporters, the issue of race is used as an ugly bludgeon in the spirit of Jim Crow.

But AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka is taking the issue head on. Beginning with a recent speech to the United Steelworkers and continuing in other union venues, Trumka directly addresses how working people can, and must, combat the racism of those who say they will not vote for a black man as president. In addressing union leaders, Trumka also speaks to all of America's workers:

There's not a single good reason for any worker--especially any union member--to vote against Barack Obama. There's only one really bad reason to vote against him: because he's not white.

A lot of good union people just can't get past the idea that there's something wrong with voting for a black man. Well, those of us who know better can't afford to look the other way.

[There's] no evil that's inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism--and it's something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge.

They may be party animals when chugging $8,204 worth of booze but, after the hangover is over, the staff at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce goes back to being their ugly anti-worker selves.

Seems that some 100 or so Chamber of Commerce staff recently ran up an $8,204 tab at The Exchange, a sports bar within staggering distance from the Chamber's architecturally ever-so ponderous Washington, D.C., headquarters. The tab included 155 pitchers of beer, 37 bottles of beer, 208 mixed drinks, 111 shots, 43 margaritas and 11 open bottles of liquor.

And when the bosses got the tab, they weren't happy. After all, the image of Chamber staffers soaking in thousands of dollars worth of Red Bull and pitchers of vodka that sources say the party-goers ordered, strays a bit from the pin-striped image the Chamber sells its members. And then there's that problem of justifying such a large, booze-soaked expense to its frugal dues-paying members out in DeKalb, Ill., or Anaheim, Calif.

Jim Wasser served in Navy combat during the Vietnam War. His father fought in World War II, a veteran of the Pacific theater.

Wasser, a member of the Electrical Workers (IBEW) union, respects Sen. John McCain's military service—but not his record in the Senate. Wasser puts it this way:

He wants us to keep spending $10 billion a month in Iraq, just like Bush. We could use that money to build schools, and roads, and create jobs with livable wages and benefits and insurance. He even took sides with Bush against increasing health care benefits for veterans.

People should let John McCain know: His agenda is not what we need, not now.

I want to share with you all our endorsement today of Sen. Barack Obama. Seth Michaels on our staff has the details below.

The AFL-CIO today endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president. The AFL-CIO General Board, which voted to endorse Obama, includes presidents of all 56 unions in the AFL-CIO, as well as Executive Council members and representatives of state and local federations, trade departments and constituency groups. The General Board votes by per capita membership. In conjunction with the endorsement, the AFL-CIO launched a new website: Meet Barack Obama.

In its endorsement statement, the General Board noted that Sen. Barack Obama "secured the nomination of his party in a campaign that has energized millions of Americans and spoken to the hopes and dreams of people from every corner of our nation."

This is really frightening. First, America's workers lose their homes. Or the equity in their homes, or their ability to take out second mortgages to pay for unexpected expenses like a health care crisis. So they turn to credit cards. Now, those cards increasingly are maxed out.

What's left?

Retirement funds.

Remember back when 401(k) plans were introduced as the promised land of personal control over our retirement destiny? While many workers who otherwise would have no retirement income have benefited from them, the proliferation of these defined-contribution plans gave employers more impetus to jettison the defined-pension plans that have helped ensure retirees don't have to work until they die. And unlike the funds in traditional employer pension plans, 401(k) plans provide ready access to cash—a $3 trillion pool our declining middle class now is tapping into.

Remember that $35 billion air fleet tanker contract—the one the U.S. Department of Defense gave to European-based firm EADS, which makes the Airbus, rather than to U.S.-based Boeing? Looks like 44,000 jobs and the expanded purchasing power those jobs would have created in more than 40 states aren't the nation's only losses in the Bush administration's decision to award the contract to an overseas bidder.

A new report compiled by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) highlights the corrupt bid-awarding process involved and found the EADS fleet will cost taxpayers money and is likely less safe than the Boeing model. In fact, IFPTE, which represents 85,000 white-collar engineers and technical employees across the nation, found the Boeing model could save taxpayers $90 billion over the program's lifetime.

A woman who spends years in medical school emerges to take her place alongside a panoply of male physicians — who, on average, make 38 percent more than she does. Female attorneys fare better — they make 30 percent less than their male counterparts. But it's not just a matter of higher pay for men in traditionally male occupations: Male registered nurses are paid 10 percent more than women — even though 90 percent of RNs are women.

This data, from a report by the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees, touches on just one of the many "challenges," to utilize a euphemism, U.S. working women face today.

Working women have lots of concerns. Equal pay. Balancing work and family. Job security. Health care coverage. Paid maternity leave...

Every day, most of us go to work and then come home. Next day: Rinse, repeat.

But some U.S. workers go to work and never come home.

In April 2005, Donald Wilcher Smith was one of them. The 22-year-old central Texas man was electrocuted at the Sanderson Farms processing plant.

This week, his father, Donald Coit Smith, described what it's like to lose his son.

I do not possess the capacity to adequately describe the horror that possesses my soul from my son’s death. To lose him caused me to reflect on faith in my God.

So it seems Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) thinks it's just fine if women workers can almost never get redress for pay inequities they suffer on the job.

This week, the U.S. Senate failed to get the 60 votes needed to vote on a bill that would have enabled women who are paid less than their co-workers doing the same job to challenge the inequity. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama took time from their campaigns to vote for the Fair Pay Restoration Act.

McCain didn't show up. But he did make it a point to say that had he bothered to vote (McCain has cast the fewest votes in the Senate of any senator not seriously ill), he would have opposed it...

In August 2004, Hector Alino Martinez and three other Colombian trade unionists were dragged out of their homes and assassinated in the streets of Caño Seco. The men were among 96 unionists killed in Colombia that year. But supporters of Bush's drive to ram the Colombia Free Trade Agreement through Congress must think a few dozen murdered trade unionists a year is OK — because they are basing their support for the deal by saying the number of murdered unionists in Colombia has dropped off in recent years. After all, there were "only" 39 killed there in 2007.

Which is why the successful move by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to take Bush's Colombia trade bill out of Fast Track is such a victory for workers here and in Colombia.

Bush really wanted to slam the Colombia deal through Congress. And because the trade agreement was negotiated while the now-expired Fast Track trade-promotion authority still was operative, lawmakers had only 90 legislative days to consider it after Bush sent it to Congress April 8. Now with the Colombia FTA out of Fast Track—a move none of its supporters anticipated—the trade deal is "dead." According to whom? According to Bush:

…that bill is dead unless the speaker schedules a definite vote. This was an unprecedented move.