By Doug Cunningham

The strike must go on! That’s the reality show playing for now in the Big Apple as talks to end the stagehand’s strike continue. The strike is hitting producer’s where they can feel it – cutting box office revenue for Thanksgiving week shows from $23.3 million last year to just $4.29 million this year. The City of New York estimates the strike is costing at least $2 million a day in lost revenue.

By Doug Cunningham

AFL-CIO Vice-President Arlene Holt Baker is joining striking Kentucky nurses today and she won’t show up empty handed. She’s bringing a $20,000 check from the AFL-CIO to help provide emergency financial support for the hundreds of nurses striking Appalachian Regional healthcare. The nurses in Kentucky and West Virginia have been on strike since October 1st against seven hospitals over staffing and patient care issues. The nurses want higher staffing levels maintained and higher patient care standards. Holt Baker will join the nurses in Lexington, Kentucky today to pre

“Last Call with Carson Daly” has now, in the eyes of striking writers, become “Late Call with the Scab.” Jesse Russell reports:

Carson Daly, who is not a member of the Writers Guild of America, crossed picket lines on Wednesday to restart production on his Burbank-based late-night talk show – he is the first host in the late night slot to do so. To make up for a lack of writers Daly sent out an email, obtained by thesmokinggun.com, asking friends and family to help him write jokes for the show. The New York-based WGA-East issued a statement expressing solidarity with the WGA-West and also disappointment in Daly’s decision to cross the picket lines. The writers have been on strike for three weeks, but negations restarted this week. The feeling is upbeat on the picket lines with many writers expecting an end to the strike in one or two weeks.

Nearly everyone but the Bush administration acknowledges America's middle class has been teetering on the economic edge for some time. Now, a project by the nonpartisan Dēmos and Brandeis University quantifies the extent to which the nation's middle class is, as the report's title puts it, hanging By a Thread. Here are its key—and chilling—findings:

• Only 31 percent of families who would be considered middle class by income are financially secure.
• One in four middle-class families are at high risk of slipping out of the middle class.
• Nearly four out of five families earning a middle-class income do not have sufficient assets to survive for just three months should their income source fluctuate or disappear.
• Twenty-one percent of middle-class families have less than $100 per week ($5,000 per year) remaining after meeting essential living expenses.
• In nearly one in four middle-class families, at least one family member lacks health insurance.
• More than half of middle-class families have no net financial assets whatsoever.

The United Steelworkers (USW), the Sierra Club and several other labor and environmental groups are going to court to force California to protect residents from a "likely" cancer-causing chemical used in the manufacture of Teflon.

The chemical, known as PFOA, is used by DuPont in making nonstick and stain-resistant coatings for products from pots and pans to carpets and clothes. It has been found to be a "likely" carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The groups filed suit last week after the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment failed to consider adding PFOA to a list of cancer-causing chemicals that fall under strict exposure and discharge regulations.

Under Proposition 65—approved by California voters in 1986—the governor-appointed Carcinogen Identification Committee (CIC) must annually update the list of cancer-causing chemicals. The union and environmental groups had petitioned the health hazard assessment agency to expedite consideration of the DuPont chemical, but the agency refused.

It's not unusual for state legislatures to hand out tax breaks, subsidies and other financial goodies to Big Business. But shamefully, some lawmakers need to be convinced to focus on the needs of low-income working families.

The Sloan Work and Family Research Network at Boston College has pulled together a compelling list of the challenges low-income working families face and how legislation aimed at those working families benefits the state and the business community.

The latest installment of the group's Policy Leadership Series reports:

Legislation supporting low-income working families can meet the state’s fiscal goals, encourage workforce participation and promote a healthy, productive workforce.

Richard Womack

Richard Womack, an assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, recently received the Bill Lucy Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the Memphis, Tenn., regional chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU). The award is given to a trade unionist whose life work demonstrates a commitment to activism and engagement on behalf of working people.

Womack says:

I was surprised and honored that they were considering me. I consider Bill Lucy to be the consummate labor statesman because of the stands he has taken over the years to enhance the lives of working people both in this country and around the world.

Lucy, the president of CBTU and secretary-treasurer of AFSCME, presented the award to Womack:

Richard’s career-long commitment to equality and justice has had a tremendous impact on the union movement. Even though this award was given by a regional group, it represents the respect and affection people across the union movement have for Richard and his work. What he does at the AFL-CIO is very important and it makes a big difference for working people.

Womack has worked at the AFL-CIO for 30 years. He was appointed director of the Civil Rights Department in 1986 and served there until he was named to his present post in 2003.

Thousands of religious, community, union and immigrant rights activists and working people are set to converge in Miami to let Burger King know that it is making a whopper of a mistake if it thinks it can continue to exploit the workers who pick tomatoes for its products.

The three-day event begins Friday morning when marchers will walk nine miles from the center of Miami's Burger King headquarters, where they will rally to demand that the nation’s second-largest hamburger chain join its competitors in paying workers a better wage.

Economic Report:

By Jesse Russell

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has issued an especially grim report concerning property values. The report suggests that homeowners could lose equity over the next year of $1.2 trillion dollars and project an increase in foreclosures of at least 1.4 million. The decline in home prices across the country will average 7 percent while California will be hit the hardest seeing a decline of 16 percent. As a result as many as 524,000 fewer jobs being created.