In Honor of International Workers' Day, We Must Pass the PRO Act

May 1 is International Workers’ Day, a symbolic time to conclude our PRO Act National Week of Action. To mark the occasion, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka (UMWA) sends the following message:

Every year on May Day, working people and our unions across the country and around the world take action to show that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. All working people are entitled to living wages, basic rights and dignity on the job—regardless of where we were born, what language we speak and what faith we practice. This International Workers’ Day, we are rising up and calling on senators to immediately pass the PRO Act and immigration reforms that will ensure all workers can join together to demand rights at work.

To fix the systems that have failed working families, we must be united across borders. Together, we can rewrite the rules of the global economy and ensure that workers are no longer treated like disposable commodities. America’s unions are fiercely committed to transforming the lives of working people through bold, structural changes that remove all barriers to the right to organize. In order to build worker power to lift standards in our workplaces, we must finally enact meaningful immigration and labor law reforms.

This includes the protection of and expansion of civil rights. The right to vote, and the right to have that vote accurately counted, is a fundamental building block of democracy and one of the most important ways for working people to express our voices. Just as it is important to fight for fairness in the workplace, it’s also important that working people can vote for candidates who will work on our behalf. Protecting every working person’s right to vote is a critical part of any labor reform effort.

As we mobilize this May Day, America’s labor movement and our allies are engaged in a full-scale, national campaign to win a long overdue path to citizenship and pass the PRO Act, which would give the tens of millions of workers who want to form a union a fair path to do so. There is much more we need to do to ensure all people are able to live and work safely and with dignity, which is why we are fighting for our right to join together and demand changes to the rules of our rigged system. We will continue to mobilize to demand reforms that uplift the standards and rights of all workers, with no exclusions.