Workers are under assault, says Bill Fletcher, Jr., and the labor movement needs to fight back. One of the best ways to do this, he suggests, is for labor to start organizing the unemployed as well as supporting their membership.

Meanwhile, Fletcher notes, 15 tea partiers get together and it makes national news, while labor's struggles are marginalized or ignored. There's plenty to fight for, though--more stimulus, jobs for those who don't have them and fair wages for those who do, better attention by the leaders to their base, and for the administration to keep its promises. Fletcher joins us via Skype from Washington, D.C. to discuss.

Hundreds of workers in the Gulf Coast cleaning up BP’s oil disaster have reported symptoms of nausea, vomiting, nose bleeds, and headaches, but those “almost all have been heat related,” according to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA Jordan Barab.

So reported Michael Whitney for FireDogLake, who has been following the struggle of workers and Gulf Coast natives affected by the disaster. Whitney joins us along with Jordan Flaherty, via Skype from Louisiana, to discuss the ongoing struggle of fishermen and the other local communities that make their living and run their lives around the water in the Gulf.

Everyone remembers an urban legend or two from childhood, those stories that warned kids away from certain parts of down, different buildings, that creepy guy who lives down the street.  But two filmmakers from Staten Island discovered there was more to the urban legend that they grew up with than just a spooky story. Cropsey is the story of their return to their childhood nightmares to find out the truth behind them.

Finally, Laura noticed that the media was missing some women when discussing the "year of the woman" in politics: the women of organized labor.