This Friday, the Los Angeles Black Worker Center (BWC) is holding its first-ever Black Workers Congress to bring workers and the Los Angeles community together to build support and share knowledge to transform the jobs crisis in communities of color. 

Activists are turning up the volume on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and making sure that more of America’s working families learn about this trade and globalization deal being negotiated by 12 countries (Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Japan, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and the United States). The deal, which is shaping up to be a “supersize” NAFTA, could affect everything from wages and job creation, to food safety, prescription drug costs, clean air and water, worker bargaining power and even the ability of states to prefer American-made products. 

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.

Two guest workers from Mexico filed a lawsuit in a California federal district court last week alleging systematic exploitation. The workers claim that during the seven years they worked for Butler Amusements, the largest carnival company in the western United States, they were “consistently underpaid” for their work “setting up, breaking down, transporting and maintaining machinery and equipment” at numerous fair sites in California, Arizona, Nevada and Idaho, as In These Times labor reporter Michelle Chen writes.

Corporations are trying to hijack a trade agreement that is currently being negotiated in secret. It's called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and if they're successful, they'll have a say in everything from your rights at work to the prices of your prescriptions and safety of your child’s toys. Working families around the world are going to be affected by the outcome of this legislation.

Take action on the TPP here. 

As people of faith and faith leaders across the country prepare for Labor Day weekend, many are planning to bring issues important to low-wage workers to the attention of their congregations and faith communities through Interfaith Worker Justice's Labor in the Pulpits/on the Bimah/in the Minbar program. Each year thousands of congregations talk about important worker justice issues affecting their community through the lens of their faith.

Today, as thousands of people come to Washington, D.C., to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, we wanted to share a powerful quote from King on the dignity of work:

So often we overlook the worth and significance of those who are not in professional jobs. Of those who are not in the so-called 'big jobs.' But let me say to you tonight, that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.

Philadelphia teachers on Thursday protested the latest in a long list of assaults on their jobs. Public school officials are demanding more than $130 million on concessions in terms of salary and benefit cuts because of an ongoing school funding crisis.

Sixteen years ago, federal workplace safety officials began developing a rule to control and limit workers’ exposure to silica dust. Some 2 million workers are exposed to this deadly dust each year and, according to public health experts, more than 7,000 workers develop silicosis and 200 die each year as a result of this disabling lung disease.

Today, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) finally issued a proposed rule. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the new rule was welcome but called the proposed standard “long overdue” and noted that the rule is still only a proposal.

Right-wing, extremist billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch have ended their pursuit of the Los Angeles Times and other Tribune Co. newspapers after months of protests by community groups, journalists and other free press advocates.