The poll, second in a series for the Change to Win federation, also shows overwhelming majorities want government to play a role in restoring the possibility of achieving that dream, researcher Celinda Lake added.

The results, released at an April 4 press conference, also prompted Change to Win Chair Anna Burger to warn that her federation\'s seven unions would hold politicians of both parties accountable for their answers to that anger. Some of them get it, she said, without naming names, but others do not.

"The truth is that the dream is still alive, and that\'s what\'s so stark--that people still believe in it" despite evidence that it has been undercut for a vast majority, she added.

CTW, which has six million members in seven unions--the Laborers, United Food and Commercial Workers, Teamsters, UNITE HERE, the Service Employees, the Farm Workers and the Carpenters--commissioned a series of polls by Lake on the dream.

The first poll, released last Labor Day, said people were anxious about achieving it--and the dream was not becoming a millionaire "or having three houses and a boat in Florida," as Burger put it. Instead, it was about having secure jobs and retirement and a better life for people\'s children. Now "they\'ve tipped from being anxious to being angry" about obstacles to those goals, Lake said. No one event caused the tip, but "Americans are running out of patience," she warned. Key findings include:

* By a 64 percent-26 percent margin workers believe the economy is headed in the wrong direction. And they discount economic data politicians tout: 82 percent say "no matter what you hear about the economy, working families are falling behind."

* Just over two-thirds (69 percent) say it will be harder for their children to achieve the dream. That\'s slightly less than the 74 percent who say it is harder to do so today.

* Asked why achieving the dream is becoming harder, corporate greed and government inaction get the blame. Some 71 percent strongly believe, on a 1-10 scale, that "corporations have gained too much power in the political system and that has hurt working people." Almost six in ten (58 percent) give that the strongest score, a "10."

An identical 71 percent say "corporations are too focused on short-term profits rather than investing in workers and their future," while 69 percent say the government "gives tax breaks and special favors to the rich while neglecting working and middle class families."

* Unions are overwhelmingly--by nine out of ten respondents--viewed as allies of workers, in achieving immediate security in jobs, pensions and health care. A smaller majority says unions can also help in achieving wider goals. About six in ten say real change is possible if business would work with unions and other organizations.

* Eight in ten want the government to hold corporations accountable for their conduct. Some 82 percent said the feds should "make sure employers keep their promises to employees, including protecting their pensions and health care," and 78 percent said government must "hold large multinational corporations accountable to pay for their fair share of the problems they create in the world," including low wages.

Burger and the other speakers, including UFW President Arturo Rodriguez and CTW Secretary-Treasurer Edgar Romney--a top official of UNITE HERE--said the union group would hold candidates accountable on the campaign trail between now and Nov. 2008 on how they plan to restore peoples\' confidence that they can achieve the dream.

"The conventional wisdom is 100 percent wrong. This poll shows there\'s been a real wake-up call to our country and our politicians," Lake said. Added Burger: "They believe politicians need to respond and government has to respond" to their anger. "The last election was not just about the war in Iraq, but the war on the middle class--and a lot of candidates ran on that."

"We\'re out there to hold them responsible, and make this the issue the candidates run on" in the presidential race and for Congress next year, she added. Of the firms, Burger said: "When they\'re irresponsible to their workers, they\'re irresponsible to themselves."

Burger also pointed out that from the end of World War II until the late 1970s--she put the date at 1979--corporations bought into the dream, too. "But we helped force" those American Dream goals "onto the corporate agenda," she said of the labor movement.

"Government can help," she added, "by taking on the issues of corporate responsibility and fair tax structures." And unions can help workers restore the American Dream when they "reach out to responsible employers," Burger said.

That recently occurred in health care, said Burger, who is also Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU, the nation\'s largest health-care workers union. In a change from the failed Clinton health care plan of 1994, she noted, corporations are now stepping forward and saying the cost of health care has ballooned and the system must change.

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.