Like many of our global counterparts, the AFL-CIO faces many challenges. Last year, the federal Bureau for Labor Statistics announced that the percentage of U.S. workers represented by unions fell in 2012 to levels not seen since the 1930s. In response, the AFL-CIO Executive Council reaffirmed its commitment to organizing a stronger, more inclusive labor movement. As part of this commitment, Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, announced an initiative on the future of worker representation. The initiative will engage elected union leaders in the United States and globally, as well as their members and staff, workers, allies and experts, to gather information to ensure that workers continue to be represented at work and in the political arena and that the labor movement makes the changes necessary for a renewal of worker representation.

The London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) has agreed to get tougher with factories in China.

Pressure by unions, advocacy groups and workers themselves has resulted in new protections for workers making badges and mascots for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Ninety-four U.S. representatives and seven senators expressed concern March 12 to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton over the deteriorating human rights situation in Honduras. In “Dear Colleague” letters, prompted by 10 labor organizations representing nearly 15 million members, the members of Congress raised Honduras’ systemic, continuing human rights violations with Clinton.

The letters say more than 300 people, including 18 journalists, have been the victims of politically related killings since the 2009 Honduran coup and remind Clinton that the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012 requires the State Department to determine and report back to Congress whether the Honduran military is investigating military and police personnel accused of human rights violations.

Today, International Women’s Day 2012, marks a disappointing statistic: Worldwide, women are paid 18 percent on average less than their male counterparts at work. This startling fact comes from a new report released yesterday by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

Today, you can take action to stop Congress from approving job-killing trade deals with Korea, Colombia and Panama and tell Republicans and Democrats to put Americans back to work.

Colombia is still the deadliest country in the world for trade union members, according to the latest global Annual Survey of violation of trade union rights released yesterday by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

Today, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will host a special presentation and discussion at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., of the new book, “Exiting from the Crisis.”

In a show of cross-border solidarity today, Canadian union members joined their U.S. counterparts in a march and rally at the Vancouver, B.C., shareholder meeting of a Canadian bank that bought the Wisconsin bank where top executives gave big campaign contributions to Gov. Scott Walker (R). Those execs now are about to pop open their “golden parachutes.”

Speaking today to the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spelled out a comprehensive new vision for global trade and investment policies to create a global economy that is good for working people, the middle class and democracy—both here in the United States and around the world.

Global unions are reaching out to Japanese workers and their families following the massive 8.9 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan, likely claimed more than 10,000 lives and left half a million people homeless.