Today is Equal Pay Day, and groups representing working women from around the country are talking about the importance of closing the pay gap, once and for all. 

The National Women's Law Center is hosting a blogger carnival on Equal Pay Day. See the full list of blogs here. 

Organizations representing flight attendants, air marshals and other concerned groups protested a new policy, announced by the Transportation Security Administration, that would allow small knives and other potentially dangerous items to be carried on to commercial flights. Labor and community groups say that allowing these items on planes breaks down one of the integral layers keeping the U.S. aviation system secure.

Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) President Veda Shook said:

Flight Attendants will not stand silently by as knives are re-introduced to the aircraft cabin. Flight Attendants serve as the last line of defense in aviation security, and we are responsible for ensuring the safety, health and security of everyone on board.

Gloria Johnson, 85, a founding member and former president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), died Feb. 13 at Southern Maryland Hospital Center in Clinton, Md. She also served as an AFL-CIO vice president. Says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:

Gloria’s values and unapologetic stance for the full inclusion of women and minorities in the workplace and society will continue to inspire and improve the lives of working women and men….The barriers she broke and the foundations she helped lay will undoubtedly live on in history.

This is a cross-post from MomsRising.org and the Labor Project for Working Families.

When Annie Bolgiano was growing up, her mother, a forest firefighter, told her daughter she could become anything she wanted. Then Annie went to college and learned another lesson:

You can go into whatever profession you want, but you are statistically unlikely to make a salary equal to your male counterparts.

Our sisters at the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) want to get the word out about a new online women’s health community just launched by the non-profit group Healthy Women that CLUW has partnered with on many projects. CLUW President Karen See says the new online community offers:

a safe health haven for women and a place where women can ask health questions, get answers and share their own experiences with other women, as well as with health care experts.

Today, working people around the world are celebrating May Day, International Workers’ Day. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the message around the globe is:

Workers’ rights should be universal and every person—no matter what nationality, ethnicity or gender—must have equal rights and the opportunity to achieve a better life.

Do you believe wealthy Americans and corporations should pay their fair share in taxes and women should receive equal pay?  Then April 17 is “Twofer Tuesday.” As part of the 99% Spring movement, some 100,000 activists will use Tax Day as a platform to demand that the 1% and corporations pay their fair share. April 17 is also Equal Pay Day, the date symbolizing how far into 2012 women must work to earn what men earned in 2011.

Listen to the conventional wisdom, and you’ll hear that women have fared better than men in the recent recession. In reality, women are not only shouldering the burden of being the sole breadwinner in more families than ever before, they also account for the majority of public-sector layoffs. Single mothers and women in communities of color continue to suffer rising unemployment of more than 12 percent.

Marvin Bing, a member of the AFL-CIO Special Committee on Labor-Community Partnerships, sends us this report on a meeting of AFL-CIO constituency groups in Phoenix.

AFL-CIO constituency groups kicked off the “We Are One Moving America Forward” symposium late last week with a series of great speeches by William Lucy, Ben Jealous, George Gresham, Danny Ortega and Judith Browne-Dianis. A resounding theme: “We can’t let the 1 percent trick us into believing we are different—We are the 99 percent, we are one and if we don’t work together on issues that bring us together, we will fall together.” We are the people who fight for working families, we are the people who fight to protect our students, children, seniors and families. We are the labor movement and together with the community we are unbeatable.

Taking the stage in Lafayette Park across from the White House in front of nearly 1,500 union members and Occupy D.C., supporters, a not-quite  Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner look-alike vowed “Never, Never, Never” to impose a Robin Hood (or financial speculation) tax on Wall Street.