America's working families want to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving! 

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka issued a statement this Thanksgiving, reaffirming the labor movement's commitment to hold America's newly elected president accountable to the promises he made to working people, and reaffirming its commitment to vanquish oppression and protect the freedoms for all who live and work here.

In a shocking and wrongly-decided opinion, a U.S. district court judge in the Eastern District of Texas has taken away overtime protection from millions of American workers. The Labor Department, labor movement and its allies denounced the decision and pledge to restore overtime protections.

This country holds sacrosanct the principle that regardless of who you are, or where you come from, your hard work will be rewarded.

For day laborers in America, at least half of whom report experiencing wage theft during their work here, this ideal rings hollow. It is no longer enough to merely have abstract principles, but for a country so expansive and so diverse, there must be mechanisms in place to ensure these principles are followed through.

On the heels of a rancorous election cycle, working people in unions around the country are assuring members who feel threatened and unsafe that the labor movement will stand with them in these uncertain times. The following statement of solidarity was issued by Rusty Hicks, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, regarding President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed next steps on immigration (after the jump). 

As the number of hate-related incidents has been escalating in the recent days following the 2016 election campaign marked by the extreme and hateful rhetoric of Donald Trump, working people in unions are calling on the president-elect to take a stand. During his acceptance speech, Trump said he would work to unite all working people.

Working people are demanding that Trump commit to representing all of America’s people by "loudly, forcefully, unequivocally and consistently denouncing these acts and the ideology that drives them."

A lot of people assume that a hefty share of working people earn money in the “platform economy”—also called the “gig economy” or the “on-demand economy.”

According to a new report, however, only 0.5% of adults in the United States earn income from digital labor platforms—such as Uber and Task Rabbit—that are used to provide labor or services. That works out to a little more than 1 million people.

Before you put together your Thanksgiving dinner shopping list, check our list of union-made in America food and other items that are essential to a traditional family Thanksgiving feast. Speaking of thanks, a big thank you to the Union Label and Service Trades Department (ULSTD), Union Plus and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor's resource site, Labor 411, for compiling their extensive catalogs of union-made products.

More than 30 new hotels are under development. Gaming is arriving in Massachusetts. Hundreds of current hotel workers are moving toward retirement. The hospitality industry in Boston is growing dramatically. The implications: employers are searching for more high-skill workers who see hotel and hospitality opportunities as a wise career choice, not just a temporary job.

High-quality registered apprenticeship programs are spreading through the hotel and hospitality industries. At the leading edge of this growth are two joint skill training programs engaging hundreds of employers in Boston and Los Angeles.

Over the next few months, we'll be following the story of Hannah Cooper, an apprentice with Electrical Workers (IBEW). Check out her first entry below:

My entire life my mother has been a union electrician—a fact of life I never thought to question. It was where she spent her days while I was growing up, and it gave her the means to support our family. Although I understood and in my own way appreciated this fact, it never once occurred to me when considering potential career paths. I had this idea that I was going to make a career for myself in the arts and spend my time traveling the world as a dancer—maybe do some part-time modeling for supplemental income—acquire a bachelor's degree at a four-year university back East and maybe try to join a dance company. This was the plan anyways, from my early years of childhood up through the first half of my senior year of high school, when I realized I didn’t want to be a dancer anymore. I stopped showing up to my college auditions, completely throwing a wrench in the plan.

Today is Veterans Day. 

Donald Trump made veterans, trade and jobs the cornerstones of his campaign. Veterans turned out en masse to support his candidacy, and now candidate Trump is president-elect Trump. But not all veterans cast their votes for him. I didn’t. In fact, I spent most of the last year actively campaigning against him. But the voters have spoken and it’s time to come together, accepting of the work we have ahead. Veterans and the working class are ready to work with President-elect Trump to make some of his campaign promises a reality, in the right way and in line with our belief system and values.

I strongly believe the outcome of this election is an indictment of politics as usual—the type of politics Sen. Elizabeth Warren has spent her career fighting against.

That’s because she leads with her values. Sen. Warren understands better than anyone that Washington must turn away from neoliberalism and trickle-down economics—trade agreements written by and for big corporations, economic policies drafted in Wall Street board rooms and the assumption that only those with money should have power.

State federations of the AFL-CIO react to the 2016 election. Read some highlights after the jump.

Today, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released the following statement on the results of the 2016 presidential election:

Donald Trump has been elected president. America is a democratic nation, and the voters have spoken. 

Today, Missourians will be voting for more than our country’s next president—they will be voting for state senators, local judges and even ballot measures like Amendment 6, which would make it difficult for hundreds of thousands of eligible Missouri voters to cast their ballots in future elections.

How, you ask?

Today working families across the country are getting out the vote for a better life. Follow this blog all day Nov. 8 for updates on the election.

On Monday, transit workers in TWU Local 234 reached a tentative agreement with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and ended a weeklong transit strike in Philadelphia. Nearly 5,000 employees are returning to work, and the deal now goes to the local's membership for a vote, which is set for Nov. 18.

This is an important election for everyone, and working people know that and have been working hard and will continue to do so until the last poll closes in the last state. We recognize that there isn't just a choice here between two different sets of policy proposals, but a choice about what kind of country we want to be and what kind of future we want to have. Here are some highlights of the work we're doing in the last few days before the election. Take a look at these and then go out and make sure that Election Day 2016 is a day of hope and progress for working people and for America.

Today, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sent the following memo to AFL-CIO leadership in the states:

Yesterday we learned Trump and FBI Director Comey’s October surprise was nothing but more hot air and bluster. Nothing new, nothing relevant, but Director Comey violated FBI policy to help Donald Trump. The FBI once again has determined that Hillary Clinton should face no criminal charges for her email practices.  Unbelievably, this non-issue was recklessly brought back into the final days of this presidential campaign for reasons that undoubtedly merit further investigation.