Update, 4:00 p.m.: The healthcare forum is no longer happening live, but you can still watch video of the entire discussion here. More about the panel here.

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Hours before President Obama gives a special address on healthcare to Congress, SEIU President Andy Stern will join Senators Bob Dole and Tom Daschle and Wal-Mart VP Leslie Datch in a bipartisan health care forum hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) and Better Health Care Together.

Other participants in the panel highlight areas of agreement among political, business and labor leaders in the health reform debate include Annie Hill, Executive VP of Communications Workers of America (CWA); Charles Kolb, CEO of Committee for Economic Development and Judy Feder, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress (CAP). PBS's Judy Woodruff will moderate. The panel, "Common Sense Collaboration: Health Reform Perspectives from Employers and Employees," will take place today from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at The Newseum in Washington, D.C.

Watch Live: The event is being webcast in real time beginning at 11:30 a.m. today at http://bipartisanpolicy.org/news/multimedia/2009/09/08/newseum-press-conference

The Chamber of Commerce's veneer of unity on health care is beginning to fade.

In the latest blow to the Chamber's "Just Say No!" strategy on health care reform, Wal-Mart joined with SEIU and the Center for American Progress today in announcing support for an employer mandate on health coverage.

An excerpt of the letter is below:

As the nation's largest private employer, the nation's largest union of health care workers with over one million members, and a think tank that has been a leader on health care policy...we are coming together to advance what we believe are important proposals that should be included in the current efforts to reform our nation's health care system.

[...] We are for shared responsibility. Not every business can make the same contribution, but everyone must make some contribution. We are for an employer mandate which is fair and broad in its coverage... Support for a mandate also requires the strongest possible commitment to rein in health care costs. Guaranteeing cost containment is essential.

Read the full letter here.

Read coverage of this letter, here. Praise from the White House Office of Health Reform on this strong support for health care reform--including an employer mandate--here.

More than 1,000 progressive leaders and activists have been in Washington, DC at the Omni Shoreham Hotel for the yearly America's Future Now! Conference, organized by Campaign for America's Future (CAF).

During Monday's opening conference, SEIU Secretary-Treasurer and Change to Win Chair Anna Burger appeared in a late morning panel with Organizing for America director Mitch Stewart and Center for American Progress president John Podesta, to discuss the progressive movement in the Age of Obama. Anna remarked on the change this country has experienced in the year since CAF's 2008 annual conference:

"It was just a year ago we came here to take back America, and we did it... We have saved our capital and our country and have our leader in the White House."

Anna stressed that pragmatism and the left working with one another played a big role in progressives winning out. "We've learned to work together to get out of our silos," Burger said, also adding that pragmatism might mean that working together might not get "perfect" results, but that it would move the country in the desired direction. Watch Anna's full presentation at CAF here and here.

The main 'event' of CAF's 2009 conference has been the launching of an $82 million campaign for healthcare reform, a collective effort involving more than 1,000 organizations that are part of Health Care for America Now behind President Obama's health care plan. The groups supporting the massive push for health care reform along with SEIU and Health Care for America Now include Change to Win, the AFL-CIO, the Children's Defense Fund, MoveOn.org, Americans United for Change, Rock the Vote, National Women's Law Center, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Democracy for America. A post by Jason Rosenbaum on HCAN's website does a great job detailing the root of the coalition's strength and why this effort will pay off:

The collective effort involves...over 30 million members committed to winning a guarantee of quality, affordable health care for all this year. It is the largest national progressive issue campaign in history, one that was lacking when President Clinton's health care proposals were defeated by the health care industry and conservative groups more than a decade ago. The money will be used for grassroots organizing (troops are already on the ground in 46 states) and a targeted advertising campaign.

Yesterday President Obama and the White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report entitled "The Economic Case for Health Care Reform," explaining in the greatest depth to date why health reform is vital for the future of the American economy. Read the report here.

Watch days 1 and 2 of the America's Future Now! conference on CSPAN here.

The Center for American Progress Report (CAP) is out, and the results are definitive: labor unions are a crucial part of fixing our economy.

The state-by-state study reports that even a five percent national increase in unionization rates would pump more than $25 billion into the national economy, $77 million of which would go directly to Maine.

As the study reports, economic recovery starts not with big government bailouts, but with the purchasing power of average Americans. 70% of our nation's economy comes from consumer activity, but with income for the median working age household falling by $2000 between 2000 and 2007, so did the accompanying consumer activity. And an economy built on debt-driven consumption is unsustainable, as we can clearly see today.

Unions have been responsible for the creation of the middle class, and pioneered such benefits as health care, pensions, even the weekend. As Penni Therault, owner of Lots of Tots Child Care and President of Kids First, MSEA-SEIU, says, "We need to lift up as many workers as possible into the middle class...When workers are doing well, our economy does well. And when our economy is doing well, there is more funding to maintain good public jobs and quality public services."

The facts from the CAP report speak for themselves:

Unions Help Workers Achieve Higher Wages

• Between 2004 and 2007, unionized workers wages in Maine were 8.6 percent higher than similarly employed workers not a member of a union


• Maine workers that join a union will earn $1.54 more per hour than their identical non-union counterparts

Workers Wage Growth Lags as Productivity Increases

• If Maine's workers were rewarded for 100 percent of their increases in labor produc¬tivity between 1980 and 2008, average wages would be $23.27 per hour - 29.60 percent higher than the average real wage in 2008.

Unionization Rewards Workers for Productivity Growth

• If the rates of unionization in Maine were the same today as they were in 1983, new union workers in Maine would earn an estimated $144 million more in wages per year.


• If 5 percent more Maine's workers were union members, $77 million would be pumped into the state's economy.


• Non-union workers would also benefit, as employers would be likely to raise wages to match those of workers in a union.

Union employers are significantly more likely to provide employee benefits:

• Nationwide, union workers are 28.2 percent more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 53.9 percent more likely to have employer-provided pensions than similar workers who are non-union.

Three out of five workers would join a union if they could (according to the Peter Hart Research Associates Poll). However, workers attempting to unionize currently face a hostile legal environment, with intimidation by aggressive anti-union employers the norm.

The Employee Free Choice Act would protect workers by ensuring a fair, majority sign up, penalizing employers who break unionization contract rules, and ensuring mediation to thwart bad-faith bargaining, all without big government spending. Boosting workers wages and benefits would provide a much-needed jolt to Maine's economy.

Let's improve our economy the American way, and pass the Employee Free Choice Act in support of unions.

SEIU members, community leaders and supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act rallied in San Diego, San Jose, Sacramento and Santa Rosa yesterday, arguing that a real economic stimulus package for California should make it easier for workers who want a union at work to have one. The events unveiled a new report from the Center for American Progress detailing how allowing workers more freedom to form unions would benefit California workers - and the state's economy. In California, wages for unionized workers were 12.7 percent higher--$2.74 dollars more per hour--than non-union workers with similar jobs during a four-year period between 2004 and 2007.

If unionization rates increased by just 5 percentage points from current levels, California workers would earn an estimated $3.7 billion more in wages per year. "Talk about a stimulus package?" commented Chris Benner, professor of regional economic development at UC Davis and SEIU ally, "This is close to $4 billion of added spending power in California!" States with low levels of unionization experienced almost twice as much job growth between 2001 and 2006 as those states with higher levels of unionization, according to a white paper published last year by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

In addition to community leaders and experts, workers who belong to unions and or would like to join one shared their experiences about the benefits of unionization and the current obstacles in the way of workers. Members from SEIU Local 521 and Local 1021 also took part in yesterday's events advocating for the Employee Free Choice Act.

Joining a union is not only good for individual workers but it is good for the economy as a whole. As the national focus begins to shift from passage of the Economic Recovery Act to securing long-term solutions for rebuilding the middle class, it's not hard to see why workers want to join unions--wages go up, benefits go up, and working conditions improve.