The holiday season is one of the most travel-intense parts of the year, and many people will be visiting and sharing valuable time with loved ones. Your ability to travel and participate in these holiday traditions is, in many ways, a product of the hard work of people who have their own families and holiday traditions to try to enjoy. With our decisions each year, we can go a long way toward not only helping ourselves, but helping those around us, too. One key way to do this is to make sure that when you spend your money, it goes to responsible companies that do the right thing on behalf of their workers.

The Good Book warns Christians against hiding their light under a bushel.

One month ago, scores of organizations and individuals came together to register our outrage about the enormous gender wage gap that Latinas face in the workplace. Nov. 1 marked the 11 additional months that it would take the average Latina worker, or trabajadora, to work to earn what a white, male non-Hispanic worker in the same job was paid in just one year. This is how long it takes when you get paid 54 cents to the dollar paid to white, male workers. Collectively we sounded an alarm marking both our discontent and our commitment to close this gap and win equitable wages for Latinas and all workers.

It's not too late yet to find that perfect holiday gift that carries a union label and is made in America. Below is a wide range of gift possibilities, from clothes to games to sports equipment and more, made by members of UNITE HERE, Boilermakers (IBB), Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM), Machinists (IAM), United Steelworkers (USW), Teamsters (IBT), UAW, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union/UFCW (RWDSU/UFCW) and United Farm Workers (UFW).

In the wake of Donald Trump winning the presidency after a campaign that often targeted and scapegoated immigrants, Latinos and Muslims, the AFT has pledged to take concrete action to assist these groups, with a particular emphasis on assisting and defending undocumented students. AFT President Randi Weingarten said the AFT will "do everything in our power to stop any kind of action against our immigrant families, our Muslim families, our Latino families and especially our undocumented students."

The U.S. economy added 178,000 jobs in November and unemployment was down to 4.6%, according to figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This continues the recovery of the labor market at a tempered rate. With the report that wage growth moderated in November, it means the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee should continue to let the economy grow at this rate and not raise interest rates.

Some people are claiming that bad jobs are inevitable and there is nothing we can do about insecure work. These people need to read an important new study from the International Labor Organization, which highlights smart policies that have been used to improve insecure work.

   
The comprehensive study by the ILO documents the rise of “non-standard” forms of work—temporary work, seasonal work, casual or intermittent work, daily work, involuntary part-time work, on-call work, temp agency work, subcontracted work, and employment misclassified as independent contracting—around the world in recent decades.

Today, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released the following statement on the recent Cabinet nominations made by President-elect Donald Trump:

After the election, we made clear that we would hold Donald Trump accountable to the promises he made to working people throughout the campaign.

His initial nominations fundamentally threaten these promises. Taken together, the appointments push President-elect Trump away from the values and issues that working-class voters said were most important to them. 

"I sometimes imagine how my life would be different if my mom had the option of paid family leave," says Travis. The District of Columbia resident was born prematurely. Because his mother could not get the time off from work to make necessary hospital visits to care for her fragile son, "She had to give me up to be raised in Florida by other family members."

Investing in infrastructure is one of the critical problems that America faces. Infrastructure improvements are necessary to keep up with a modern global economy, to create jobs and to make sure that America is ready to face unknown challenges the future brings. A new report from AFL-CIO Director of Policy Damon Silvers and the Roosevelt Institute makes the case that such investment is vital for our future and lays out the types of investments that will do the most to help us move forward.

Ever heard the saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it?

That's how most Americans feel about Medicare. It works, so don't touch it (unless you're going to make improvements). Medicare provides comprehensive health care coverage to millions of seniors, and it's more cost effective than private insurance. 

But not everyone loves Medicare so much. And one of those people is Rep. Tom Price from Georgia, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for health and human services secretary. 

Since Donald Trump won the election, nearly 900 incidents of violence, hate speech and harassment have been reported. In light of these attacks, it's important that you know what your rights are and what you can do if you or someone you know is the target of one of these attacks in the workplace. Click on the links to learn more about your rights, what constitutes illegal activity and what you can do about it if you are targeted.

After the election, much of the discussion has been focused on working-class voters, but many of these discussions are heavily focused on white working-class voters and they largely leave out working-class voters of color. But if you look deeper, the economic anxiety that was said to be a driving force for those white working class voters is stronger for people of color and it isn't being talked about that much at all.

Rather than slice and dice the electorate into different demographics and voting blocks, we have to understand what happened on Nov. 8 not as a vote for or against the two presidential candidates. Rather, it was something much larger. It was an expression of the insecurity of working people all over the formerly industrialized world, brought on by globalization forcing them to compete for work in a labor market without borders. Candidate Donald Trump was correct when he said, "I see a big parallel" between U.K. voters favoring Brexit and U.S. citizens supporting him. Both were expressions of the belief that existing institutions of government are no longer protecting the security and well-being of working people in a global economy.

In the wake of a very divisive election cycle, it's important that we have a conversation about how to bring people together on common issues and move forward toward solutions that benefit as many Americans as possible. And it's important that working people be a part of that conversation.

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).