February 16, 2011

Public schools in Madison close after teachers call in sick to protest Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s bill that would strip the state’s 175,000 public employees of their collective bargaining rights.

January 18, 2016

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a U.S. federal holiday celebrating the birthday of civil rights activist and organizer Martin Luther King, Jr. The campaign for a federal holiday in his honor began soon after his assassination in 1968. President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later. It was officially observed in all fifty states for the first time in 2000.

November 30, 2011

Public service workers in the United Kingdom join the biggest single strike since 1926, against the government’s pension reforms. About two-thirds of state schools closed, and thousands of hospital operations were postponed, as unions estimated up to two million people went on strike.

October 13, 2015

Home care workers are finally getting protections they should have had years ago. After a U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a Department of Labor Home Care Final Rule to extend minimum wage and overtime protections to almost 2 million home care workers, the ruling is effective as of today, October 13, 2015.

September 29, 2010

Tens of thousands of protesters take to the streets of Europe, striking against government austerity measures. Workers in more than a dozen countries participated, including Spain, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Slovenia, and Lithuania, protesting job losses, retirement deferments, pension reductions, and cuts to schools, hospitals, and welfare services.

September 26, 2013

Teachers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – on strike since early August over proposed wage cuts and loss of job security – occupy the City Council chambers before a vote on the proposed plan. A series of further actions led to an agreement that included raises for the teachers, a review of workload and curriculum requirements, and the reinstatement of all teachers who had been fired during the strike.

September 12, 2012

A fire at a textile factory complex in Karachi, Pakistan, kills nearly 300 workers trapped behind locked doors and barred windows. It happened just hours after another fire at a shoe factory in Lahore killed at least 25 workers. Labor leaders blamed government abandonment of enforcing laws and regulations established to ensure workplace health and safety.

September 7, 2015

Today is Labor Day. In 1894, after sending in the Army and U.S. Marshals to break the Pullman strike, President Grover Cleveland’s popularity was in the toilet. In the immediate wake of the strike, legislation designating a federal Labor Day holiday was rushed unanimously through Congress and arrived on Cleveland’s desk for his signature.

September 4, 2013

Labor organizer and civil rights activist Jessie Lopez de la Cruz dies at the age of 93. Born in 1919 in Anaheim, California, de la Cruz worked as a migrant farm worker from a young age. She joined the United Farm Workers in 1965, became the union’s first female organizer, was involved in numerous strikes, and helped ban the crippling short-handle hoe. De la Cruz remained a political activist until her death.

August 22, 2010

Police open fire and attack with tear gas 2,000 garment workers who block a highway in Dhaka, Bangladesh, for three hours to demand that they be paid overdue wages. In 2010, the garment industry in Bangladesh raked in $12 billion, but the minimum wage for garment workers – working 10 to 16 hours a day under hazardous conditions, six days a week – was $24 a month.