On LABOR DAY.

 

LULAC ON LABOR DAY: AMERICA IS BUILT BY THE HANDS THAT EARN THEIR WAY Nation's Oldest and Largest Latino Civil Rights Organization Proudly Joins the Nation and Salutes a Workforce Strengthened by Every Generation WASHINGTON — The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) marks Labor Day 2026, on the nation's 250th birthday, by honoring the working men and women whose strength, will, and endurance are the foundation of everything the United States has built. These generations of workers, through their perseverance, bones, sinews, and muscles, raised the nation's cities, fed its families, defended its shores, and carried its children forward. This is their day, and LULAC salutes them. "Labor Day belongs to every U.S. worker who ever earned a wage with their hands, their back, or their mind, and also to the immigrants who came here asking for nothing but the chance to work," said Roman Palomares, LULAC national president and chairman of the board. This country was not built on fear of the newcomer. It was built by the many contributions of the newcomer, generation after generation, and LULAC will not allow that history to be rewritten by those who profit from division. If you are willing to work, follow the law, and give your best to this nation, you belong here, and America is stronger because you came." LULAC joins with the organizations that give working people their voice: the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union and the United Farm Workers. We share a conviction that this country's strength rests on the people who teach its children, care for its sick, harvest its fields, build its infrastructure, and keep its economy moving. LULAC is working closely with these organizations and the millions of members and families they represent. Together, we see tremendous opportunity ahead, today and in the years to come, to ensure that Latino workers and every working family share fully in that future. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, foreign-born workers made up 19.1% of the nation's civilian labor force in 2025, and Hispanics or Latinos accounted for nearly half (47.3%) of that foreign-born workforce. Foreign-born men participated in the labor force at a rate of 76.9%, well above the 65.8% rate of their native-born counterparts. The bureau also reports that Hispanics, now roughly one in five American workers, accounted for about two-thirds of the net growth of the U.S. labor force over the past two decades. "The numbers do not lie. One in five American workers was born somewhere else, and nearly half of them are Latino. Hispanics have supplied two-thirds of the growth in our labor force for a generation," said Juan Proaño, LULAC chief executive officer. In 2024, the U.S. Latino GDP growth reached $4.4 trillion. In 2026, that number continues to increase, outpacing China's GDP growth by nearly 1%. Strip that contribution out of the economy and the country does not merely slow down; it stops. Labor Day is the right moment to say plainly that a workforce this multifaceted is not a problem to be managed. It is the competitive advantage every other nation wishes it had." Today's workforce is multifaceted in age and origin. The Pew Research Center reports that roughly 19% of Americans 65 and older, about 11 million people, remain employed, nearly double the share of the late 1980s. Women now make up 46% of that older workforce. At the same time, 19% of workers ages 25 to 64 are Hispanic, compared with 9% of those age 65 and older. The lesson is plain: the generation now stepping forward to carry the load looks different from the one it is relieving, and the nation's prosperity depends on both. "Women have always done the work that makes all other work possible," said Elida J. Martinez, LULAC national vice president for women. "The mother on the overnight shift, the daughter who cares for an aging parent and still clocks in, the grandmother who is still on the job at 70 because her family needs her there. Nearly half of the workers over 65 in this country are women, and the number is climbing. On Labor Day, LULAC honors them not as an afterthought but as the backbone of the American workforce." Yet some who make up the Latino workforce are still stereotyped through false narratives, narratives of the past that reflect neither our present need nor our future. A closed-minded society denies itself a greater opportunity. LULAC rejects the premise that one worker's victory is another's defeat. A neighbor's success is not a threat; it creates the conditions for everyone to succeed. The nation's immigration system was built to manage that opportunity through law and process. Through proper management of immigrants' labor contributions, along with those of All Americans, in appreciation and not fear, the U.S. economy can continue to thrive. "Every generation of immigrants and U.S. citizens has produced sons and daughters who put on the uniform of this country, and many immigrants did so before they were even citizens," said Lawrence "Larry" Romo, LULAC national vice president for military and veterans affairs and a retired Air Force officer. The same determination that brought their parents across an ocean or a river is what carried them through basic training and into combat. When they came home, they went straight back to work. Anyone who questions whether newcomers are willing to sacrifice for America should visit a veterans cemetery and read the names. LULAC honors all of our active duty personnel and veterans for their heroic work that makes 'One Nation Under God, With Liberty and Justice for All' a reality." LULAC calls on Congress and the administration to honor the American worker this Labor Day not with speeches alone but with a modern, functioning immigration system that serves the nation's economic needs, protects labor rights for all who work and serve, and reflects the all-inclusiveness in America that has always been the source of the country's strength.

Immigrant Workers - Confront the Lies

https://youtu.be/4u_HwUn4bYQ?si=HGJCaGhmTdbNb2aE

I hope you’ll watch this week’s video to see Julie Su describe the abuses immigrant workers face on the job and break down what we must do to protect them from exploitation.

Robert Reich, 

Join the May Day Strike in Sacramento

Low Wage Workers hold one day strike

Bill Barclay

In 1962 I graduated from Raleigh, NC’s, high school for white kids. (African-Americans attended a different high school, although this was eight years after Brown v. Board of Education.) Two years later I dropped out of college and found a job at the Char-Grill, one of Raleigh’s earliest fast food restaurants.   I was paid $60 for a 48-hour week, the then federal minimum wage level. After four months I was promoted to “night manager” at the princely sum of $70/week ($525 in today's dollars).  I was a “front line supervisor” as they are called in official employment statistics. And for all intents and purposes my career ladder was at an end.  I could have stayed at the Char-Grill another ten years and still remained a shift manager, perhaps moving to the day shift but no further.

I had not thought much about this experience for some time, but the rolling one-day strikes by low-wage workers, with fast food workers in the lead, brought back a lot of memories. Yes, some things have changed since I worked at the Char-Grill. White males were the only employees at the Grill, while today the “food preparation and serving” occupation is almost 2/3 female and over 30 percent African-American and Latino. 

Defend Immigrant Rights

Defend Immigrant Rights  - Duane Campbell

International Worker's Day – May Day – 2013 took on special meaning this year, as the drumbeat for immigration reform got louder and louder. As part of an ongoing campaign, the Service Employees International Union and allied organizations – such as Mi Familia Vota, Community Center for Change and other labor unions and immigrants’ rights groups – celebrated May 1 with major actions in over 70 cities across the nation.

The current immigration bill proposed in the U.S. Senate has some positive provisions, but it falls short because it includes a guest worker program as well as an extensive further militarization of the border.  The bill being drafted in the Republican-controlled House will probably be worse.

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) favors both the permanent extension of the DREAM Act and broader immigration reform legislation that would grant immediate permanent resident status to all undocumented workers and their children and would establish an expeditious and non-punitive road to citizenship for those workers and their families.

We also oppose all workplace discrimination based upon immigration status, and oppose any and all guest worker programs because they exploit the workers and undercut all workers’ rights to secure humane wages and working conditions, especially in the service and agricultural sectors.

DSA participates in the global struggle for equitable economic development and labor rights to reduce the forces that push desperate people to emigrate. We understand that massive migrations of workers, refugees and asylum seekers are a consequence of a global political and economic system that works for the benefit of transnational corporations at the expense of the vast majority of the peoples of the world. We also believe that low-wage workers of color, including immigrants, will be central to the “movement of movements” that is critical to the development of a “new new Left.”

See prior post: “A Working Class View of Immigration Reform,” by David Bacon.

Get involved at http://www.dsausa.org/current_campaigns.

Duane Campbell is a professor emeritus of bilingual multicultural education at California State University Sacramento, a union activist for over 40 years, and the chair of Sacramento DSA. He blogs on politics, education and labor at www.choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com and www.talkingunion.wordpress.com.

Striking Verizon workers deserve our support

Lawrence Mishel

Lawrence Mishel is the president of the Economic Policy Institute and the senior co-author of The State of Working..
Update: the strike has been suspended. No one won- yet.  The economics of the post continue to be excellent.

The Verizon Corporation is asking its workforce to accept wage and benefit reductions—despite being a very profitable company. Morgan Stanley’s recent analysis shows Verizon’s net income from ongoing operations was $13.9 billion in 2010, up more than 16 percent from 2007. No wonder Verizon’s stock has outpaced that of the S&P index and other telecommunication’s firms, something Verizon itself brags about in its last annual report. How, then, can Verizon freeze current workers’ pensions and eliminate pensions for new workers? Ask their workers to accept reductions in holidays (to seven), reduced sick pay and the substitution of the current health plan with one having high deductibles and contributions? The unions involved estimate that benefit and wage reductions would total $20,000 per worker each year.

About the Author

Understandably, the workers have gone on strike. This labor conflict, however, is a microcosm of a broader trend in our economy, one that is not healthy for overall growth and certainly not conducive to improved living standards for America’s working families.

American workers are beset by a deep recession that continues with no end in sight. Unemployment has been roughly 9 percent or above each month for over two years and underemployment has correspondingly remained at 16 percent or more. At some point over the course of the year, one out of three workers (four out of 10 Hispanic or black workers) will be unemployed or underemployed. Simply put, we have been stuck for a long time with unemployment that is worse than even the worst moments of the last two recessions. The consequence is that a June poll showed that 43 percent of adults have been either unemployed or have an unemployed family member. Some 61 percent of respondents knew a family member or friend (or themselves) who personally experienced a reduction in wages, benefits, or hours worked. The misery from persistent high unemployment is widely shared. Unfortunately, the consensus of forecasters expects unemployment to still be 8.5 percent at the end of 2012, so the misery will continue.

In stark contrast, businesses are doing exceedingly well. The Commerce Department has recently reported that corporate profits have increased by a third since the start of the recession: this is a very impressive gain since the economy is still smaller than it was before the recession began.

A Lost decade for U.S. workers

By Neil Irwin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, January 2, 2010

For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households. But since 2000, the story is starkly different.

The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation's growth.

May Day : International Unions Statement

State of Delusion

State Of Delusion

Robert L. Borosage

January 24, 2007

Robert L. Borosage is co-director of the Campaign For America's Future .

Last night’s State of the Union address revealed that the state of this president is still delusional. He can’t level with the American people because he can’t or won’t recognize the reality that we face.

The best part of the speech wasn’t anything the president said. It was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sitting over his shoulder, signaling the change that Americans voted for. The president also got a lift from the “ordinary heroes” that he recognized at the end of the speech. But when it came to substance, the president seemed bored with his own words as he trotted out his pledge for more of the same.

For this president, the economy is great and we need to stay the course. The Democratic response by freshman Virginia Sen. Jim Webb offered a glimpse of the reality that the president doesn’t get—that this economy isn’t working for most Americans. No wonder fewer than a third of Americans think the president has any clue about the problems they face.

For this president, we have a strategy for moving forward in Iraq, and we’re garnering global support for our foreign policies. Maybe he's back on the sauce; he certainly isn’t reading his briefing papers or listening to his own generals. The president called for bipartisanship, apparently not aware that senators from both parties are already coming together—in opposition to the president’s escalation of the war in Iraq. Again, Webb offered a dose of reality in his response, stating flatly that it was time to bring the president’s war to an end, and that if he couldn’t understand that, “we will be showing him the way.”

Even where it has dawned on the president that there is a problem to be addressed, his proposals are gestures, if not mockeries. The health care system is broken. The president’s reforms, by his own exaggerated numbers, might provide health insurance for maybe 3 million of the 47 million that now go without, while taking a whack at workers who have decent plans (read unions) and public hospitals (read Hillary Clinton’s New York, which takes 40 percent of the hit).

Catastrophic climate change and our dependence on foreign oil are a clear and present threat to our security. The president recycles his ethanol enthusiasms (substituting “woodchips” for last year’s “switch grass” as a potential source). But his plans won’t even cover the projected increase in U.S. oil demand over the next decades. He still defaults on the imperative for a dramatic national drive for energy independence—like that called for by the Apollo Alliance , which can generate jobs even as it helps address global warming.

Our education system is not providing the basics—children with the nutrition and access to health care to be ready to learn, universal pre-school, smaller classes in the early grades, skilled teachers, affordable college and advanced training. The president offers only to continue the No Child Left Behind reforms that he has failed to fund.

Immigration reform is a vital necessity. The president calls for comprehensive reform, in the face of growing right-wing opposition. But he insists on a guest worker program, simply a subsidy for exploitative employers, insuring them a pool of second-class workers.

The president’s speech was more striking for what it omitted than for what it contained. No mention of our unsustainable trade deficits, the loss of 17 percent of our manufacturing jobs, the growing indebtedness to foreign creditors, particularly the Chinese and Japanese central bankers. No talk of the worst corporate crime wave in modern history, with executives cooking the books and plundering their own companies. Not a word about the worst inequality since the Gilded Age or the rise of families in poverty. Obscenely, the president said not a word about the beleaguered survivors of Katrina, who, having weathered that hurricane’s winds now must struggle to survive the administration’s broken promises.

Speaker Pelosi’s presence and Sen. Webb’s response offered the only solace for Americans watching last night. This president remains in his bubble, divorced from a reality he can’t see, committed to a course at home and abroad that won’t work. But it matters less and less. Americans have already tuned him out, and the Congress no longer dances to his fancies. From now on, it is the new leadership in Congress that “will be showing him the way.”