After 45 years of driving a cab in New York City, Beresford Simmons says the emergence of the National Taxi Workers Alliance in the past few years is helping his family and those of other drivers reach the middle class. Simmons’ story is one of three illustrating that unions make the middle class strong, giving workers a voice in our economy, portrayed in a trio of new videos by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

 

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AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released the following statement in response to the Senate Judiciary Committee's immigration bill: Today brings to mind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s wise and hopeful words, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” More than 11 million aspiring Americans took a big step toward becoming citizens today with the bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee vote. That reflects an enormous step toward healing an injustice, the deportation crisis that has wrecked families, communities and workplaces for far too long. Read more >>>

Wilma Liebman who served 14 years on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—including chairwoman from 2009–2011—says, “Appointments to the NLRB have been a political battleground for decades.” But, in a column in Politico, she says the current attack on the NLRB is the most vicious since the board was created in the 1930s. Read more >>>

Leading up to the AFL-CIO convention in September 2013, the AFL-CIO is hosting a crucial conversation about the future of working people and of unions—in union halls and online at www.aflcio2013.org.

Rana Plaza, the Bangladesh factory that collapsed three weeks ago, killed more than 1,100 workers, many of them young women. This tragedy adds to the more than 1500 Bangladeshi workers killed in preventable fires and building collapses since 2005. Documents found at the factory show that the workers produced for big names in global retail revealing the link between poor workers in Bangladesh and major retail brands.Obviously, the government must improve local laws and their enforcement to stop these tragedies, but brands must also take responsibility for their supply chains. They must be held accountable to the tragedy that happened in their supply chain. Read more >>>

The vast majority of America's workers have largely been shut out of the nation’s economic growth over the past three decades, reports the 12th edition of The State of Working America from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Released today and available online, the report finds that the typical American family has added hundreds of extra hours of work each year, while also earning better education credentials, yet is still struggling to keep up. Read more >>>