If you're one car accident away from poverty, you're on a high wire without a safety net. And that's a challenging proposition.Collection: Car
My father earned his citizenship by serving in the Army during World War II. He devoted his life to caring for our nations veterans at a VA hospital in Buffalo, New York. That desire to serve fellow Americans propelled my four siblings into medical careers, too.Collection: Medical
Full-time workers earning the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 only earn about $14,500 a year in wages - below the poverty line for a family of two. That's unacceptable.Collection: Family
Budgets are moral documents. They reflect the values of any government and when you're compromising clean air, clean water, and lead, you're making a statement about communities you don't care about.Collection: Government
On July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act. Its enactment, following the longest continuous debate in the history of the U.S. Senate, enshrined into law the basic principle upon which our country was founded - that all people are created equal.Collection: History
The United States is one of the few nations on the planet where paid family and medical leave or earned sick time is not the law of the land.Collection: Medical
Of all the tough decisions in life, choosing between the job you need and the family you love should not be one of them.Collection: Family
Growing up in Buffalo, I saw shuttered factories that once housed thousands of steel manufacturing jobs. I remember the hollowing-out of the middle class in our community. I witnessed hope turn to hardship as a once-thriving city reckoned with a fast-changing world.Collection: Hope
There's a myth out there that you have to genuflect at the altar of quarterly earnings. But it's a false choice that you can either be a good fiduciary or promote values such as environmental sustainability.Collection: Environmental
I believe the passage of a national paid family and medical leave law is not a question of if, but when. But as is so often the case on important public policy issues, we need states and localities to be the incubators of innovation.Collection: Medical
From the new hate crimes law to the repeal of DOMA and 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' to the emerging popular support for marriage equality, we are making progress at breakneck speed. As someone who has dedicated most of my career to civil rights law, I am deeply moved by this sea change and proud to have done my part.Collection: Equality
With patience, persistence, and partnership, we can create economic opportunity for every person willing to work hard for it.Collection: Patience
I had the luxury of skipping the cabinet meeting to attend my daughter's graduation. So many people don't have the luxury of taking an hour away from the workplace to attend indispensable family commitments. We have to change that dynamic.Collection: Graduation
The theme of the Labor Department's centennial is 'Then, Now, Next.' So in honoring Esther Peterson, we look not just to the past but to the future, acknowledging with honesty and a sense of purpose the lingering challenges we still face and the distance we've yet to travel before equality is truly a reality in the lives of all women.Collection: Equality
Misclassification means workers are denied not just minimum wage and overtime but other social safety net protections like workers' compensation and unemployment insurance.
Misclassification is a serious problem in construction as well as other industries, and it is exacerbated by increasingly fissured employment structures where work is contracted and subcontracted away from the core company.
For the purposes of the FMLA, marriage will now be determined based on where the couple got married, not on where an employee lives. This is called a 'place of celebration' rule.
As America prepared for war in 1941, discrimination largely shut black Americans out of job opportunities in the growing defense industry.
Civil rights activists and union activists shared not just common values and objectives but also common enemies.
Dr. King's last campaign was a labor struggle. Many people are aware that King was assassinated in Memphis in the spring of 1968. Less well-known is what drew him there: solidarity with city sanitation workers, who, without the benefit of union representation, were rising up to protest humiliating pay and deplorable working conditions.
The King Holiday is a celebration of many things - his pursuit of racial justice, his commitment to non-violent resistance, his belief in service and doing for others. But you might also call it the other Labor Day.
The most important family value of all is time with your family.
You shouldn't have to win the boss lottery in order to have a little bit of flexibility at work. Raising and supporting a family isn't just a financial obligation. What's important isn't just being able to put food on the dinner table - we want you to be at the dinner table, too.
It's time to update our workplace policies to reflect the realities of the 21st-century labor force and to support modern working families. It's time to continue our nation's long commitment to supporting unemployed workers by extending emergency unemployment compensation.
If I don't get something done at the office at 4:30 in the afternoon, I can go back to it at 10:00 in the evening.
Tampa Electric has used apprenticeships since 1978 to make sure its workforce is the best in the business - trained, prepared, and productive. Apprenticeships improve its bottom line and give the company a competitive advantage.
Costco pays their workers good wages with benefits while selling good products at competitive prices and remaining quite profitable.
Extending emergency unemployment benefits isn't just the right thing to do for our families - it's the smart thing to do for our economy.
When you put more money in the pockets of working families, they spend it on groceries, gas, school supplies, and other goods and services. And that helps businesses grow and create jobs.
To reward work, to grow the middle class and strengthen the economy, to give millions of Americans the respect they deserve... It's time to raise the minimum wage.
I've talked to several CEOs - from a recycling company in Indiana, a furniture company in Kentucky, a brewing company in Colorado, and more - who believe paying higher wages is both the right thing to do and part of a successful business model.
It's wrong that so many hardworking people - people working full-time, or even multiple jobs - need public assistance just to survive.
We need to see the FLSA and the minimum wage as part of a larger struggle to cut poverty and to address the challenge of income inequality.
Improving veterans' employment is an all-hands-on-deck enterprise. We work with the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, with private sector partners and others.
Helping veterans isn't just a part of my job. For me, it's personal. It's in my blood.
Too many jobs don't pay enough to get by, let alone get ahead.
When I taught a civil rights class at the University of Maryland Law School, I would do an exercise with my students. I'd write 'civil rights' on the board and ask them to tell me what immediately came to mind.
We can't understand what we've accomplished on civil rights without telling the story of Bayard Rustin. And now, we must write the next chapter in the American civil rights story by drawing strength and inspiration from his moral courage.
The best way to promote and protect opportunity is through collaboration, consensus-building, and pragmatic problem-solving. Throughout nearly 30 years in public service, I have approached tough challenges by making room for as many people as possible around the table in search of common ground.
Frankly, what we need to be looking at is whether this election was rigged by Donald Trump and his buddy Vladimir Putin.
Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman's right to make her own choices about her body and her health. That is not negotiable.
People are so sick of these Twitter tirades. They want leaders they can be proud of.
The politics of division are not what we want in New Jersey and Virginia and elsewhere.
Talk about the issues that matter most to people.
Donald Trump, you don't stand for our values.
Our universal message of access to economic opportunity resonates with the ironworker in northeastern Ohio and the immigrant in South Florida. And we sometimes have a relationship deficit with our voters, because we're not communicating that message.
The Republican playbook is voter suppression.
I consider Keith Ellison a friend.
We have to have a conversation where we bring in all the stakeholders and say, 'What is the vision of the Democratic Party?'
Here's the reality: when Hillary Clinton won the nomination, the DNC handed her insufficient and substandard tools for success.