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The labor movement has a long history of fighting for civil rights for all Americans and human rights worldwide. Despite major victories over the last 50 years, there is still hard work to do.

Without the labor movement, there would be virtually no safety and health protections in American workplaces — and fewer environmental protections against toxic chemicals and other hazards throughout our homes and communities as well.

In Buffalo, N.Y., a man is alive because he could get to an emergency room. In Midland, Texas, a needy child is fed because of a social worker's patient attention.

Organized labor was the driving force behind the tremendous growth of employer-sponsored pension plans from the 1940s to the 1990s, with the number of Americans covered by pensions rising as more workers gained bargaining rights. Yet, today, with union membership in the U.S.

If you've got a union contract, you earn more — at least a little more, and sometimes a lot more — than minimum wage. Yet no group has worked harder than union members to raise the country's minimum wage and the standard of living for America's working poor.