<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Sally2017_92px.jpg\")
As another summer winds down, and we plan for one last extended weekend before turning the page onto fall, Labor Day offers a time to reflect on the increasingly challenging environment that working families face securing fair wages, benefits, and working conditions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Currently 16,000 members of the United Steelworkers union are waiting to hear whether they\u2019ll be going on strike<\/a><\/span> when their employment contract with U.S. Steel expires in just days. Union and management are reported to be at a near-stalemate over a new contract that the union has described as \u201cextremely insulting\u201d and would offer marginal wage increases for workers, who would be locked into a proposed 7-year term.<\/p>\n For the first time, incarcerated workers are<\/a> courageously raising their voices, and are in the middle<\/span> of a multi-week, nation-wide strike organized in response to the slave-labor wages they are forced to accept as further punishment for their lives behind bars. It\u2019s shameful that we treat prisoners like chattel.<\/p>\n And the courts continue to batter workers, spurred on by a Chamber of Congress and a business community that attack working folks\u2019 right to organize at every turn. Earlier this summer, a narrow 5-4 anti-worker and anti-union ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in\u00a0Janus v. AFSCME<\/em><\/a>, found hat unions cannot collect \u201cfair share fees\u201d from workers who have not joined the union but receive the benefits of organizing\u2014a major blow to unions in their efforts to improve working conditions for all<\/em> employees.<\/p>\n In Washington, DC, where NCL is headquartered, we are fighting alongside restaurant and other hourly workers to preserve Initiative 77 from being rescinded by the D.C. City Council. Initiative 77<\/a>, a worker-led campaign that passed by a 56 percent to 44 percent margin, would raise the paltry $3.89 hourly tipped wage by $1.50 a year until it reaches $15 by 2025. After its passage, seven members of D.C. City Council pledged to overturn the initiative, undermining the 46,000 DC voters who supported it.<\/p>\n Wage theft, misclassification, and other employer abuses continue to plague our workforce, but at the National Consumers League, which was founded by a group of Progressive-era women concerned about factory conditions for workers\u2014including children\u2019s\u2014we will continue to fight for worker protections alongside our allies to ensure that protections for America\u2019s working families are strengthened, not eroded.<\/p>\n