AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre, who came to this country as a child refugee, has a message for world leaders: “It’s time to step up.” This Sept. 19 at the United Nations, governments will meet in a global summit to develop a plan for addressing large movements of refugees and migrants. It is essential that they make commitments to open up opportunities, rather than close borders, and work together to protect the human and labor rights of families on the move.

July 2016 is an important month in the history of the city of Los Angeles. That history is one of a pro-business city, where a trajectory of unbridled capitalism, as well as contemporary expectations of how the economy should work, did not point to success in implementing what became one of the most impactful minimum wage and wage-enforcement ordinances across the country. July 2016 is a month when, against great obstacles, justice trumped business.

In honor of Labor Day, Union Plus is celebrating with a sweepstakes so nice, you can enter twice. Here’s how it works.

Last week, working people at eight Zara locations in New York chose to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). Zara is owned by Inditex, the world’s largest fashion retailer, and the company did not oppose the union drive. More than 1,000 employees will now be represented by RWDSU Local 1102. RWDSU represents workers at retail stores such as Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s, and supermarkets, drugstores and car washes.

Monday night in Cleveland, the AFL-CIO’s young worker program, Next Up, hosted a town hall, Working for Our Future, which addressed issues for young people, by young people, and how they can make a major difference in this election and their communities.

Each week, we take a look at the biggest friends and foes of labor. We celebrate the workers winning big and small battles, and we shame the companies or people trying to deny working people their rights.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released the following statement in reaction to Donald Trump’s economic plans.

Anniversaries can be celebratory or somber. Today we celebrate the 51st anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and it is the kind of anniversary in which we hail the success of the Act while also acknowledging the deficiencies in our democracy that make the full Act necessary.

The NFL Players Association (NFLPA), in conjunction with the National Football League, strengthened its commitment to the health and safety of its players last week by announcing an agreement to enforce the league’s game-day concussion protocol and discipline clubs that violate it.

The U.S. economy added 255,000 jobs in July and unemployment was unchanged at 4.9%, according to figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Admit it, if you like sports at all, you're probably starting to get a little excited about the Olympics. For the second straight Olympic Games, all of the clothing the American athletes will wear in the opening and closing ceremonies will be made in America.

The real world is quite complicated. We make sense of it for the purposes of assessing policies by using the shorthand incorporated in accepted myths and memories. For instance, James W. Loewen explains how the many “facts” that can be brought to bear to explain the Civil War have been condensed into a myth that the Confederacy was about protecting states’ rights and intersectional differences over policies from an overpowering federal government. This myth, or the sense of memory that most Americans have in understanding the Civil War, of course masks the racism inherent in most right-wing extremism in the United States today. That “memory” of the Civil War lets people look past the racism of Donald Trump, to interpret him as heir to that stream of Americana of someone who bravely battles the meddling federal government in Washington.

Now that one-percenter Carl Icahn has announced that he will close the Trump Taj Mahal rather than negotiate with working people, Marty Rosenberg looks back at how the casino's troubled history really began when Donald Trump took over. Here's Rosenberg's story.

Bob McDevitt, President of Unite Here Local 54, released the following statement after Carl Icahn announced he would close the Trump Taj Mahal rather than negotiate with the casino's working people.

In addition to passing resolutions on the economic agenda for working women and prescription drug prices, the AFL-CIO Executive Committee passed numerous resolutions today. Click on the link for each resolution to read more.

During last week's Democratic National Convention, one of the many powerful moments was when former New York Police Department detective Joe Sweeney spoke about his experiences on Sept. 11. He described the experience.

This week, the AFL-CIO Executive Council received a new publication, The Responsible Investor Handbook: Mobilizing Workers’ Capital for a Sustainable World. Authored by Thomas Croft and Annie Malhotra of Heartland Capital Strategies, the handbook documents how union members’ pension plans helped pioneer the responsible investing movement. Today, investors with more than $60 trillion in assets globally have become signatories to the U.N. Principles for Responsible Investment.

Are you upset by prescription drug prices that are way too high?

We all come to unionism and activism in our own way. I came to it through an injury—fate is funny that way.

I was fortunate to have been on “Beverly Hills 90210” because it allowed me to move forward with my own talk show and then go on to other movies and television jobs. It’s been an amazing experience.  And I loved being on a hit show—who wouldn’t? But, then…