AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Shuler is in Toledo today to celebrate Labor Day with Ohio's working families. 

"We honor and recognize the working men and women who built this nation through sweat, sacrifice and innovation," says Shuler. "We stand united in our belief that everyone deserves a voice on the job, a living wage and a workplace safe from harassment and abuse."

Thomas E. Perez, the U.S. secretary of labor, sends you this message on Labor Day:

Brother and Sisters,

From the U.S. Department of Labor, where I proudly work in a building named for my great predecessor Frances Perkins, let me wish all of my friends in the AFL-CIO and your families—wherever you are—a safe, happy and healthy Labor Day. This Labor Day feels special in many ways: we’re celebrating 100 years of the Labor Department’s tireless efforts on behalf of American workers, and last week we celebrated the March on Washington 50 years ago—a transformational moment in our history that was just as much about labor rights as it was about civil rights. Today, let’s remember that these two movements remain inextricably intertwined, their interests converging time and time again, their goals essentially the same. 

Today, on Labor Day, we celebrate the incredible contributions of America’s working people. If you're celebrating at home or want to see what's going on in your area, check out the “You Work Hard. You’ve Earned It” Labor Day website.

Labor Day is an opportunity to take stock of the ways workers are honored and respected, writes the Most Rev. Stephen E. Blaire, bishop of Stockton, Calif., in the annual United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Labor Day statement.

Here are excerpts from the bishops’ message. Read the full message here.  

Earlier this year, Pope Francis pointed out:

Work is fundamental to the dignity of a person....It gives one the ability to maintain oneself, one's family, to contribute to the growth of one's own nation.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wants to say "thank you" this Labor Day weekend to the working men and women who make this country great. 

Watch her video message in this post. 

Detroit, Labor Day and a Hard Day’s Night was originally published on The Hill's Congress Blog. 

The Beatles first visited Detroit just before Labor Day in 1964, and they gushed with admiration for the Motown sound. Detroit hummed with industry then, like the Beatle’s own Liverpool, England, with its bustling ports and pop music scene. Both industrial cities would soon flounder, losing 40 percent of their populations over the next 30 years.

Today, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) launched an online wage calculator that lets people see what their wages should be if based on increases in worker productivity and if most companies didn't fail to adequately compensate workers for those gains. For example, if you are a worker who makes $40,000 a year and you enter that salary into the calculator, it tells you that you should be making $62,529 if your wages had kept up with productivity increases.

Click here to get to the calculator. 

On the heels of nearly 200 labor-led actions that already have been held in support of a comprehensive immigration policy that includes a road map to citizenship, working families will participate in more than 160 Labor Day weekend events around the country. Most of the events will focus on calling on House Republicans to quit holding immigration policy hostage and for them to do the right thing on behalf of aspiring Americans.

Text NOW to 235246 to tell Speaker John Boehner you want a vote on citizenship. Standard data and message rates may apply.

New technology is keeping more and more workers stuck in low-wage jobs, and it's society's responsibility to make sure those jobs still have dignity and fair wages.

With robots taking over factories and warehouses, toll collectors and cashiers increasingly being replaced by automation and even legal researchers being replaced by computers, the age-old question of whether technology is a threat to jobs is back with us big time. Technological change has been seen as a threat to jobs for centuries, but the history tells that while technology has destroyed some jobs, the overall impact has been to create new jobs, often in new industries. Will that be true after the information revolution as it was in the industrial revolution?

Labor Day weekend provides a unique opportunity for faith communities, workers, worker advocates and the labor movement to rediscover their common bonds: social justice, equality, the dignity and respect of all persons, economic justice and fair treatment in the workplace.