President Obama and Speaker Boehner have been in negotiations for weeks to figure out how to extend a series of tax cuts and how to avoid the "sequester": $1.2 trillion in additional spending cuts that will happen on January 1st unless Congress acts to stop it. As Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta explained, sequestration is "an indiscriminate formula" that "was never designed to be implemented. It was designed to trigger such untold damage that it would force people to do the right thing."

The National Center for Transgender Equality honored SEIU this month with the Community Partner Award for our union's "outstanding efforts to expand access to healthcare for transgender people."

In 2011, SEIU updated our employee healthcare benefits to provide transgender-inclusive health benefits to all International staff and their dependents. Following this success, at SEIU's 25th Convention earlier this year, SEIU members unanimously voted to include trans-inclusive healthcare in contract bargaining.

These measures to protect SEIU members and staff from discrimination on the basis of gender identity are part of our union's efforts to ensure that all people are treated with dignity and fairness in the workplace and in our society.

More than 1,500 activists were on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, December 18th to demand Congress stand up for working people in the "fiscal showdown" negotiations. SEIU, NEA, and AFSCME members, retirees and union staff joined other progressive activists to tell Congress to protect Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and to make the rich pay their fair share. After a rally and march to Speaker Boehner's office where activists delivered coal, delegations did sit-ins in 30 House Republican offices.

The #D18 Day of Action made news all over the country. Check out some of the coverage below:

The Palm Beach Post:

"Protesters from a coalition of progressive, labor and community groups lobbied against those cuts Tuesday outside the Capitol and visited Republican lawmakers in their offices. As they went from office to office, they sang fiscal cliff lyrics to the tune of Jingle Bells: 'No more cuts, No more cuts, No more cuts - no way. We need to raise revenue, So make the bankers pay.'"

WUSA 9:

Last month I joined hundreds of labor activists and union members from across the country in Washington, D.C. to urge our elected members of Congress to create jobs, and not cut funding to vital services like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security in the ongoing budget deal negotiations.

I went to our nation's capital because I hoped that I could make a difference. People in my community of Wilmington, Delaware always tell me that the "squeaking wheel gets the oil." When you don't say anything, they think you're going along with the program. Our leaders need to honor why we put them there. It shouldn't just stop after we've elected them.

Will you help me let Congress know what's at stake for America's hardworking middle class families? Click here to write a letter to your U.S. Representative.

Our fight for the 99% isn't taking time off for the holidays -- it's too important. Today, thousands of activists will be on Capitol Hill to make sure Congress hears our demands for economic fairness.

Please add your voice to the chorus. Click here to write a letter to your U.S. Representative.

It's a tune we're all too familiar with: As our country watches the ticking clock of the "fiscal cliff," vital social safety net services like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are at risk.

Wall Street is pushing Congress to enact a large deficit-reduction deal that takes a hatchet to retirement programs and spending that helps the middle class in order to boost their own profits and pay less in taxes. Wall Street advocates have concocted a series of arguments aimed at scaring policymakers and the public into accepting a bad budget deal.

Here are a few of the more common fallacies Wall Street and its advocates in Washington are promoting.

REALITY: This is not true. The economy will not immediately plunge into a recession if there is not a budget agreement by January 1.Going over the fiscal cliff could be perilous, but no deal is preferable to a bad one that cuts Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. In January the Senate would immediately push to revive the lower tax rates for everyone but the top 2 percent.

REALITY: The daily fluctuations of the stock market are not very important in the decision-making processes of most companies in the real economy. For example, when the stock market fell over 500 points in October 1987, the economy grew at a 7% annual rate the following quarter. One thing does not necessarily lead to another.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently announced that the Fed would keep interest rates as low as possible until unemployment reaches substantially lower levels:

"The Committee decided to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and currently anticipates that this exceptionally low range for the federal funds rate will be appropriate at least as long as the unemployment rate remains above 6-1/2 percent, inflation between one and two years ahead is projected to be no more than a half percentage point above the Committee's 2 percent longer-run goal, and longer-term inflation expectations continue to be well anchored.

The Committee views these thresholds as consistent with its earlier date-based guidance in determining how long to maintain a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy."

This commonsense approach reflects the reality that our economy is recovering, but continues to struggle. Steep cuts in spending will make it even harder for the economy to recover. Economists generally agree that austerity measures are a drag on economic growth and job creation. Cutting the deficit through spending cuts will shrink the economy, deepen the economic crisis for working families, hurt the middle class, and exacerbate income inequality. Studies have demonstrated that steep cuts in spending will cost jobs. In 2011, it was estimated a five percent cut to Medicaid could result in the potential loss of more than 250,000 jobs.

On Tuesday, I joined more than 17,000 workers; union and non-union in a mass
rally together outside of the State Capitol building as anti-worker legislators answered Governor Rick Snyder's call to divide Michigan by ramming through two so-called "right-to-work" bills which promise to kill jobs, lower wages, crush workers' rights and unravel the middle class.

Snyder misled the people of Michigan by announcing he would sign the bill Wednesday, but waited until all of us gathered outside the capitol returned home before calling a closed last minute press conference and bill signing on Tuesday night.

But I have news for Snyder; we won't be silenced. It's going to take us all coming together to turn this piece of dangerous legislation around. You can sign this pledge to take action in the coming days and months against "right-to-work-for-less" in Michigan.

This week more than 2,500 Philadelphia security officers ratified their first-ever citywide union contract.

What does it mean?

Effective on January 1, most officers will see their hourly wages increase from between $8 and $11 per hour to between $10.45 and $13 per hour by the contract's expiration in 2016. For the first time, full-time officers will receive employer-paid health care beginning in 2014. Officers also won sick days, job security, a uniform allowance, an official channel to solve problems on the job--and, importantly, the ability to negotiate further improvements in future contracts.