Around the United States and across the globe today, workers, unions, activists and allies are celebrating International Workers' Day. May Day is a national holiday in more than 80 nations that honor workers and workers’ rights and celebrates the significant role unions play. May Day actions in the United States this year will place a special emphasis on immigrant rights and the need for comprehensive immigration reform.

We need to talk—about the future of workers and the union movement.

We've all seen the numbers: People are working harder (and have longer hours) and still can't get ahead. Staggering inequality is on the rise and fewer workers have a voice on the job.

AFT President Randi Weingarten is calling for a moratorium on the tests under the new Common Core education standards until teachers have been given adequate preparation to teach what students need to know to tackle them. She says that the high-stakes nature of the tests makes implementing them too soon potentially a problem for both teachers and students. A delay would allow for mid-course corrections where needed and would allow for aligning the standards, school curricula, teacher training, instruction and assessments.

It's been a good few years for taxi drivers gaining a voice on the job. Today in Austin, Texas, the National Taxi Workers Alliance (NTWA) granted its first local chapter charter since it joined the AFL-CIO. The NTWA was chartered by the AFL-CIO in 2011, with New York City and Philadelphia locals as the founding members.  

A new Bloomberg article notes that the CEOs of the Standard and Poor's 500 corporations make 204 times as much money as their own employees. The article highlights the most extreme disparity in the S&P 500, where former J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson received a total compensation package 1,795 times that of former fashion jewelry saleswoman Rebecca Gonzales in 2011.

The joint effort known as the “Oregon Organizing Project” has helped more than 3,000 Oregon workers win a voice on the job in the past several months. In the most recent campaign, several Oregon unions pitched in and worked together to help more than 300 Head Start workers at Mount Hood Community College who wanted to form a union to address serious workplace concerns.

Georgia Power, one of the largest utilities companies in the South, took out a full-page ad in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution honoring the contribution of Electrical Workers (IBEW) who jumped into action and helped out during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  The rare instance of a corporation lauding union members in a major press outlet was a reaction to a resolution honoring the members of IBEW Local 84 that the state legislature passed at the request of the Georgia AFL-CIO.

Payday lenders can trap working people in a never-ending cycle of debt. Big Banks also have gotten into the business by offering “deposit advance” loans. For years, consumer advocates have been calling on regulators to rein in abusive payday loans, which often charge interest at more than 300% per year. These exorbitantly high interest rates drain money from low-income communities.

If you are one of the millions of workers who count on overtime to stretch your paycheck, including the 59% of US workers paid by the hour, it’s time to tell House Republicans, “Don’t cut my overtime with your so-called Working Families Flexibility Act (H.R. 1406).”   

The bill would allow employers to stop giving workers any extra pay for overtime work and instead substitute “comp time.”

What would that mean for most workers?

A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) shows the country needs to increase union membership significantly, create universal health care, a universal retirement system (beyond Social Security), expand college attainment and achieve gender pay equity to create more "good" jobs in the United States.