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workers rights
How Shorter Workweeks Shaped Lula’s Comeback
Lula's comeback offers a powerful lesson: Ambitious economic policies can capture voters' imaginations when they promise tangible improvements in everyday life and win their hearts when you can deliver on that vision.
Nov 07, 2026
In just three weeks last month, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva turned a 2.2-million-vote deficit in the first round into a 4.4-million-vote victory in the runoff. He won 52% to 48%. The six-point reversal made him the first candidate in Brazil's modern presidential history to win a runoff after being down in the first round. He increased turnout and appears to have converted voters who didn’t initially vote for him.
Much has been written about the organizing mechanics of this remarkable turnaround and the revitalization of "Lula's Army." While these explanations tell us how Lula’s campaign mobilized voters, they don’t tell us why voters mobilized. The contrasts between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro were of course already stark, but if they were so stark, the changing of the tides wouldn’t have been so dramatic over three weeks. That emphasis on organizing mechanics overlooks strategic policy decisions Lula made those final weeks to deliver concrete victories for Brazilian workers.
And the most powerful of those decisions? In October, Lula successfully fought for the passage of a constitutional amendment to shorten the workweek from six days to five days, which had been one of his main campaign pledges. This was one of the most meaningful Brazilian labor reforms in decades. By the end of 2027, workers will have 10% of their time back and an additional day of rest. So many voters are used to politicians making promises but not delivering on them. Lula made sure workers knew he had their back by delivering real policy change in a critical period of the election. And this policy was not a niche policy change impacting small segments of the population. It’s estimated it would concretely touch the lives of over 30 million Brazilian workers by giving them their time back.
The Political Power of Giving Workers Their Time Back
For millions of Brazilian workers, they’ve had a “6x1” schedule their entire lives: working six days every week with just a single day to recover. Burnout, unsurprisingly, had become epidemic. Shortening the Brazilian workweek had been advanced by unionists in Brazil for decades, but had taken on newfound pressure from a grassroots campaign called Vida Além do Trabalho (Life Beyond Work). This campaign, founded in 2023 by worker-turned-politician Rick Azevedo, helped turn growing frustration into a real political movement. From 2023 to 2026, workers and politicians worked together to steadily build support in Congress, organizing demonstrations, running for office on a shorter workweek agenda, collecting millions of signatures, and incorporating the demand into campaign rallies. This culminated in Lula focusing on shortening the workweek in his May Day 2025 rally and sending a bill to Congress in April 2026, bringing this issue into the forefront of the presidential election.
The grassroots campaign also helped seed widespread support for shorter workweeks across the political spectrum, helped in part by the fact that shorter workweeks intuitively connected to workers’ material self-interest. In March 2026, a Datafolha poll showed that 71% of Brazilians supported ending the six-day workweek, including 77% of women.
Lula recognized the opportunity. Just days after his first-round defeat in October, he publicly challenged Bolsonaro to support the reform. Simultaneously in October, University of Brasilia’s student union held a 50,000-person rally with the slogan “Bolsonaro never again, and end the 6x1 now.” This bottom-up and top-down approach worked. Bolsonaro and his opposition party initially opposed the proposal. But amid widespread backlash, they quickly backed down. They agreed to a special Senate session to ensure the passage of a constitutional amendment which would result in a 10% reduction of workers’ workweeks (from 44 hours to 40 hours) and two guaranteed days of rest by the end of 2027, with no loss in pay. The public hunger for this change was so deep that the amendment passed 75-1 in the Senate and Congress passed it two days later.
Time Is a Cost-of-Living Issue
Lula's comeback offers a powerful lesson. Ambitious economic policies can (1) capture voters' imaginations when they promise tangible improvements in everyday life, and (2) win their hearts when you can deliver on that vision. And few promises are more meaningful than giving workers back the one thing they can never earn more of: their time.
The cost-of-living crisis is a global issue: When you hear the struggles of Brazilian workers, they’re not too different from those of American workers. Just as in Brazil, there’s an epidemic of burnout and widespread frustration that the American dream has just resulted in being overworked and tired. Brazilian politicians and movement leaders savvily recognized that cost-of-living and affordability is about prices and wages, but also about time.
American politicians should start paying attention. The United States established the 40-hour workweek nearly 90 years ago. Despite massive changes in who works, how we work, where we work, and when we work, that workweek has stayed at approximately 40 hours at the individual level, and we work more household hours than we did 60 years ago. With AI on the horizon, even more could change rapidly with work.
American politicians should keep in mind that the shorter workweek offers an opportunity to translate this burgeoning coalition for shorter workweeks into meaningful policy change.
In this moment of burgeoning economic populism, shorter workweeks could be a policy that helps politicians deliver real widespread change that is also immensely popular. The Brazil example is instructive. Any shorter workweek bill deserves to be passed merely for the sake of giving time back to workers, but it also holds real electoral fruits. As in Brazil, approximately 7 in 10 Americans support shorter workweeks. After all, a better economy shouldn't just mean having more money in your pocket. It should mean having more life outside of work.
Similar to Brazil in 2023, we’re seeing small scale progress in the last few years. At the federal level, 32-hour workweek bills have been introduced in both houses of Congress from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.). At the state and local level, policymakers as wide-ranging as a Republican in Maine, Rick Bennett, and a DSA NY Member in NYC, Phara Souffrant Forrest, have advanced shorter workweek legislation. Both unions have advocated for this and hundreds of companies have adopted it.
The dust will soon settle on the 2026 midterms, and campaigns will start prepping for the 2027 and 2028 elections. American politicians should keep in mind that the shorter workweek offers an opportunity to translate this burgeoning coalition for shorter workweeks into meaningful policy change. Lula's comeback shows what can happen when politicians give workers something worth fighting for, and then deliver on that idea.
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Will the Blue Tsunami Bring a New Deal for Unions?
What American workers—and American democracy—need most is a larger, more powerful labor movement. Unions should take advantage of this moment to build one.
Nov 06, 2026
Union activists like me can be forgiven a certain degree of giddiness after Donald J. Trump’s agenda got walloped in the midterm election. After all, Trump has been one of the most anti-worker presidents in history. He stripped millions of federal employees of the right to bargain collectively, he gutted the National Labor Relations Board, and he sliced back regulations that gave overtime to millions of employees and that protected people from being improperly classified as independent contractors without labor rights. He cut taxes for corporations and billionaires and slashed food and medical benefits for working Americans.
Congress is now in the hands of Democrats, including many who trend younger and more progressive, and even more who proclaim themselves to be the friend of the working person (some even say “working class”). Alas, Trump remains in place. It would take some extraordinary parliamentary maneuvering to undo all—or perhaps any—of Trump’s anti-worker policies. There is no reason to shy away from uphill battles, but we cannot expect complete victory in the next two years.
Anyway, the agenda is broader than a few immediate policy initiatives. As I argue in my upcoming book, Building Power: Collective Action, the Writers’ Strike Against Hollywood, and Organizing for the Future (Cornell University Press), what American workers—and American democracy—need most is a larger, more powerful labor movement. That is the key to making sure the federal government acts in the interest of working people over the long haul. (By “working people” I mean everyone who earns a living by their own labor, whether by putting up buildings or tending to patients or teaching kids or writing software or working on the assembly line.)
If unions and their members (and potential members) want to make meaningful, sustainable advances, now is the time to commit to doing the hard work of organizing.
Here is the painful truth: Only about 10% of American workers are represented by unions. In the private sector, it’s closer to 6%. It is difficult to get corporate chieftains and elected politicians to fight for working people in the face of corporate opposition when union density is such a small fraction of the overall labor force and economy.
Things were this bad when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected. Union density was about 11% in 1934. The New Deal transformed federal labor law, FDR proclaimed that every worker should join a union, and the labor movement got to work organizing the unorganized. By 1945, density skyrocketed to nearly 35%.
Union density remained between 30-35% for decades, and tens of millions of union members won a measure of economic security. Wages and productivity increased at about the same rate, roughly doubling from 1948 to 1973 (Sven Beckert, Capital: A Global History (Penguin Press 2025) at p. 949). In other words, working people won a reasonable share of the wealth they created.
Union density nosedived after the early 1970s, and economic inequality exploded. From 1980 to 2020 income gains for the top 1% were more than triple those in the middle. The gap became even larger between the truly wealthy and the less well-off; the top 0.1% saw gains 12 times as large as those of the lowest 20% between 1979 and 2022.
A recent Economic Policy Institute study estimated the gains working people would make if union membership tripled to about 30%: $1.2 trillion a year, or about a third of the increase in economic inequality since 1979. Thus, if union density returned to where it was during the New Deal, this would put a serious dent in the economic inequality that has roiled American politics and ruined household finances. It is difficult to imagine a more powerful outcome for the Blue Tsunami than a New Deal for unions.
However (and sorry, this is a distinctly non-giddy point), one midterm election does not lock in a long-term political realignment. We need politicians to support pro-worker legislation for as long as it takes—decades, not years. The first legislative step would be to transform federal labor law to support, rather than hinder, unionization. That would make it vastly less difficult to increase union density.
None of this will happen by itself. Political candidates and consultants do not build movements. Organizers and leaders and activists and members do. Political winds shift and elections swing like pendulums. More important, politicians respond to leverage, not good vibes. They will only adopt labor law reforms if they feel sustained pressure to do so. If unions and their members (and potential members) want to make meaningful, sustainable advances, now is the time to commit to doing the hard work of organizing and bargaining, of engaging working people directly, of building their power in a sustainable way. They can use that power to exert leverage on whichever politicians seek their support. That is the surest way to capitalize on the gains that working people made in the midterm elections.
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This Election Season, Turn Out for Working Women
When we show up to the polls, we increase our chances of winning the gains needed for working people to take care of ourselves and our families. That’s what this election is all about.
Oct 21, 2026
With midterms fast approaching, it seems that all eyes are turned toward what will happen pre- and post-election. There is nonstop coverage of how much money is being spent on local, state, and federal races, as well as the ongoing threats to our democracy.
The political moment is stressful, particularly for working women and nonbinary people of color. Prices are rising, wages are stagnant, and it seems harder than ever to get ahead. Despite the stress of the political moment, there is reason for hope, and we can find those reasons at the polls.
When we vote, we show up for ourselves, our futures, and for collective power. When we show up to the polls, we increase our chances of winning the gains needed for working people to take care of ourselves and our families. That’s what this election is all about.
If collective power was truly meaningless, we wouldn’t see so many attempts to limit it.
We know there are policies that will improve the lives of our communities, and we know they are achievable. We have seen what advancements in equal pay and workplace protections are possible when women organize and policymakers listen.
The power of organizing is why we at 9to5 recently held a fundraiser and rallying point, “Built By Us, For All of Us.” When we raise our own money and move it on our own terms, we can speak truth to power and fight for our communities without compromise. Real power comes from neighbors organizing and showing up for each other, not billionaires and corporate interests spending to divide us and keep money at the top.
If collective power was truly meaningless, we wouldn’t see so many attempts to limit it. If we couldn’t win, we wouldn’t see racial gerrymandering in the wake of Louisiana v. Callais, threats of armed federal agents outside of polls, or the looming specter of legislation like the SAVE Act (which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, adding even more roadblocks to the process for women, LGBTQ+ folks, and people of color).
We have too much to gain to let efforts aimed at limiting our collective power stop us from being heard. Instead, they further compel us to respond with action. We need elected officials in office who will fight for policies that allow for safe and affordable living and working conditions. It is high time for policies that expand workplace harassment protections, close the gender pay gap for women, and pursue climate and utility justice.
We are long overdue for a national paid leave policy in the US that would expand paid family and medical leave policies at the state and federal level. It is proven that paid family and medical leave improves employee well-being and workplace productivity. Expanding paid family and medical leave policies at the state and federal level could change workers’ lives. They would no longer have to choose between getting paid or taking time to care for themselves and their loved ones.
Childcare affordability is a serious concern for voters across political ideologies, and parents can’t work without childcare. Investing in affordable, accessible, quality childcare supports small businesses and state infrastructure as well as parents, children, and communities. Lawmakers can push through false narratives to give the necessary resources to the workforce behind the workforce.
Housing justice and affordability is another issue at the top of minds; the cost of housing tied for the second most pressing issue for Americans in a recent Gallup poll. Everyone needs a warm, safe, and stable place to live; policies prioritizing safe housing and renters' rights can bring this into reach for families across the country.
These are all issues that can be advanced if we elect leaders who will fight for our interests in office.
Every single voice counts, especially in this political moment. When we come together, speak out, and vote for officials who care about and answer to their constituents, we invite the possibility of true change.
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How the World Bank Can Ensure AI Jobs Are Really 'Better'
In Bangkok and Seoul, “better jobs” should mean a living wage, protection when illness or injury stops someone from working, and the power to negotiate working conditions. These are rights that require enforcement.
Oct 18, 2026
The World Bank has high hopes for the positive impact of AI. Its flagship World Development Report this year is even titled “The Promise of Artificial Intelligence.”
From its annual meetings in Bangkok through October 18 to the following week’s Global AI and Digital Summit in Seoul, the bank is promoting AI’s potential to deliver “more and better jobs.” But what would it take to make that promise real for workers?
The experience of platform workers offers a cautionary tale. For millions of “gig workers” worldwide, algorithms, including AI systems, already act as the boss.
This rapidly expanding and precarious system requires robust regulation of how companies use technology to manage work and accountability for workers’ pay, safety, and social security.
Human Rights Watch research in the United States found that major companies use opaque and frequently changing algorithms to set pay, leaving workers unable to understand how their earnings are calculated. Customer ratings feed into systems that determine access to jobs, with little opportunity to contest unfair scores. Workers whose accounts are deactivated struggle to get clear reasons or reach anyone with the authority to reverse the decision.
The problem goes beyond opaque decisions and limited ways to challenge them. Companies also insist that workers are mere independent contractors to avoid long-established employer responsibilities, despite the control they exercise over workers.
Take Uber, which now operates in over 70 countries. Uber generally treats drivers as self-employed, saying that it merely connects them with customers. Yet its systems set fares and govern access to work. Treating drivers as independent contractors rather than employees leaves them without minimum wage guarantees or employer contributions to social insurance. The company directs the work while shifting much of its cost and risk onto workers.
Our research across platforms and countries, including in Lebanon, Mexico, Pakistan, the UK, Kenya, India, as well as across the Gulf, found striking similarities in platform workers’ experiences. They showed us pay records revealing sharp daily fluctuations in earnings and detailed substantial costs for vehicles, fuel, and other work equipment. On some days, their expenses exceeded their earnings. Some workers injured on the job spent months without income, relying on family and friends or taking on debt to survive.
A delivery worker in Delhi told us he faced financial penalties for missing delivery targets. While rushing to complete an order, he braked to avoid a collision with a motorcyclist, fell, and broke his arm. He paid for treatment himself. “We don’t get anything from the company,” he said.
His experience shows how this system compounds the harm to workers. Algorithmic management pressures them to take risks and punishes them if they fail to comply, while they bear the consequences if the risks cause them to get hurt.
This rapidly expanding and precarious system requires robust regulation of how companies use technology to manage work and accountability for workers’ pay, safety, and social security. Such regulation should, at a minimum, ban algorithmic management practices that pose an unacceptable risk to workers’ rights.
A new international labor convention offers hope that these protections can become a reality. In June, governments, workers, and employers at the United Nation’s International Labour Conference adopted Convention No. 193 on Decent Work in the Platform Economy by a vote of 406 to 8. It is the first binding international labor standard to regulate algorithmic management for platform workers.
The convention requires ratifying governments to ensure that workers can request written explanations of significant automated decisions that adversely affect their work. Workers must have access to review, with appropriate human involvement, when decisions withhold pay or cut access to work. It also provides safeguards for pay, safety, social security, and the right to organize, although some protections depend on employment status.
Crucially, governments must take measures to ensure correct employment classification, guided mainly by how work is actually performed and paid rather than by the labels a company chooses to apply in a contract.
Together, these provisions address both how technology is used to manage workers and companies’ responsibilities toward them. They give the World Bank a concrete yardstick for some of the “better jobs” it hopes AI will deliver.
The stakes extend beyond ride-hailing and delivery. Research by WIEGO highlights that gig-ification has spread into domestic work, beauty services, and data work, with many of these workers also facing algorithmic control and limited ways to resolve workplace problems. The International Labour Organization and the European Commission have also documented algorithmic management in conventional workplaces, including logistics and healthcare. Workers across these sectors should also be entitled to protection from harmful uses of these systems and effective ways to challenge decisions.
Governments should ratify the new convention, implement it with workers’ participation, and address harmful uses of automated management across labor markets. The World Bank should support these efforts through its advice and financing, helping governments to enforce labor protections and to ensure that workers can challenge decisions affecting their pay or access to work.
In Bangkok and Seoul, “better jobs” should mean a living wage, protection when illness or injury stops someone from working, and the power to negotiate working conditions. These are rights that require enforcement. The institutions promoting AI have a responsibility to help make that promise real.
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By Delivering a Shortened Workweek, Lula Proves He's Still in the Running
Many US media outlets think the fight is over in Brazil, but it is far from over here; Lula is nearly tied in the polls and has a lot ahead of him.
Oct 17, 2026
Greetings from Rio de Janeiro, where President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is mounting a hell of a comeback after achieving the Workers' Party's 40-year goal of shortening the Brazilian workweek from six to five days.
Now, polling shows Lula is back in the fight, even as US media ignores it.
Polls Show Brazilian Presidential Race Tied
Following the first round of the election, where Lula trailed Flávio Bolsonaro by 1.8%, many wrote off Lula’s campaign. However, in the past week Lula has pulled off an impressive series of street mobilizations that have rocked the Brazilian presidential race, with over 1 million marching on Copacabana Beach on a Monday afternoon when Lula wasn’t even there.
With more than 38 million Brazilians not voting in the first round of the presidential election and Bolsonaro only leading by 2 million votes in the first round, many Bolsonaro allies worry that the scale and magnitude of Lula’s rallies could inspire massive Get Out the Vote efforts throughout the country.
The mobilizations helped create the energy that led the Brazilian Congress to pass a measure shortening the Brazilian workweek from six days to five Wednesday. This may now create enough energy to help Lula win the presidency.
Various polls this week have shown the race nearly tied.
A new PoderData poll shows Lula and Bolsonaro tied, with a little over a week until election day. Yet another poll released by Real Big Time Data shows that Bolsonaro is only leading by 1%. A third poll by CNT and MDA shows Bolsonaro at 50.5% while Lula has 49.5%
Bolsonaro Party Leader Worries About Mass Lula Mobilizations
With more than 38 million Brazilians not voting in the first round of the presidential election and Bolsonaro only leading by 2 million votes in the first round, many Bolsonaro allies worry that the scale and magnitude of Lula’s rallies could inspire massive Get Out the Vote efforts throughout the country.
In an audio message sent to party insiders, top Bolsonaro ally Congressman Gustavo Geyer said that he was worried about the potential of the street protests to mobilize the vote for Lula.
In the audio message, Geyer complained at length about the 4 million-strong WhatsApp group “Lula’s Army.” Previously, a Bolsonaro-appointed Supreme Court Justice, Kassio Nunes Marques, blocked the WhatsApp group for several hours before being overruled by other members of the Brazilian Supreme Court.
"The campaign of electoral terrorism that Lula and the PT [Workers’ Party] are conducting in a criminal manner—that 'Lula’s Army' channel, created by that 'Rachadones' character—is truly managing to mobilize the left in a way we have never seen before,” said Guyer. “The demons of Workers’ Party have crawled out of the catacombs of hell and are genuinely making an impact on the tracking polls.”
Lula Shortens Brazilian Workweek With Only One Vote Against
For nearly 40 years, the Workers’ Party has tried and failed to shorten the Brazilian workweek from six days to five. But this week, Lula pulled off a stunning victory when the Brazilian Senate voted to shorten the Brazilian workweek while not decreasing the pay of workers.
Only one senator voted against the measure, and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro skipped the vote rather than vote against it.
Brazilian labor leaders say that the success of the vote proves the momentum their campaign is having in the streets.
“The Bolsonaro family lost,” said Miguel Torres, the president of the Força Sindical labor federation. “It's a victory for workers.”
Bolsonaro Wants Supreme Court to Silence Unions
Fearing attacks from unions, Flavio Bolsonaro went to the Brazilian Supreme Electoral Tribunal, part of the Brazilian Supreme Court, this week to ask it to silence union attacks against him on social media.
Bolsonaro's lawsuit names 56 people, mainly union leaders and student leaders. Flavio wants the court to block these individuals from using their institutional channels to promote Lula.
"This offensive doesn't just target Lula's campaign. It's directed against public participation, against the right of citizens to organize, express support, and criticize a candidacy," said André Matheus, a specialist in freedom of expression and vice-president of the Lawfare Commission of the Institute of Brazilian Lawyers (IAB).
For more, check out ICL Noticias.
Help Cover Lula's Comeback Fight
Many US media outlets think the fight is over in Brazil, but it is far from over here. Lula is nearly tied in the polls and has a lot ahead of him. We've got nine days left, and Payday intends to cover the tough fight ahead.
We need your help to cover this story that no one else is covering: Donate today.
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Mental Health Is Worker Health
It is clear from occupational health research that work does impact mental health, and this impact should compel politicians to explicitly legislate and develop regulations to protect workers' mental health.
Sep 29, 2026
Over the summer, the Fifth Circuit Court, in a case brought by ExxonMobil, ruled that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, had “exceeded its statutory authority” by citing Exxon for failing to record a work-related mental illness.
This case followed an incident in Baytown, Texas where an explosion and fire occurred during repairs on a hydro-desulfurization unit, injuring multiple workers. After the explosion, a technician volunteered to lead firefighters to several valves that needed to be shut off to prevent the fire from continuing. While receiving treatment after his first excursion to assist the firefighters, he courageously agreed to lead the first responders to another valve.
Following this incident, the technician experienced anxiety and was later diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by two professionals. Despite these diagnoses, Exxon did not accept the determination that his PTSD was work-related and requested that the technician see another provider, which the technician refused. The union that represented workers at the Baytown location reported the incident to OSHA, which then issued a penalty against Exxon for failing to record the technician’s PTSD as work related.
It is also important to acknowledge that there is not a clear distinction between physical injury or illness and mental illness.
After Exxon challenged the penalty, the Fifth Circuit Court canceled the penalty based on a narrow reading of OSHA’s authority under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 to “prescribe regulations requiring employers to maintain accurate records of, and to make periodic reports on, work-related deaths, injuries and illnesses,” concluding that the “illnesses” referred to in the act do not include mental illnesses.
While others have questioned the soundness of the legal reasoning in the decision, it is clear from occupational health research that work does impact mental health, and that this impact on mental health has consequences for the life, well-being, and indeed physical health of workers. This impact should compel politicians to explicitly legislate and develop regulations to protect workers' mental health.
Recognizing the impact of work on mental health is nothing new. In an 1844 issue of the Lowell Offering—the publication created by Lowell Mill Girls in the early days of the industrial revolution in the United States—Harriet Farley speculated on how the nature of the toil in work at the Lowell Mills could have contributed to the recent suicides of two of her comrades:
In factory labor it is sometimes an advantage, but also sometimes the contrary, that the mind is thrown back upon itself—it is forced to depend upon its own resources, for a large proportion of the time of the operative. Excepting by sight, the females hold but little companionship with each other.
Specific work-related factors associated with adverse health consequences include long work hours, shift work, bullying, harassment, workplace violence, traumatic events, low control over work, and job insecurity. These factors stem from the work environment and are not just a concern because of their impact on workers' mental health, although this connection is clear. These sources of stress in the work environment can also increase the risk of physical health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders (such as carpal tunnel syndrome and low back pain), and acute traumatic injuries. The burden of exposure to these workplace factors is not borne equally by all workers. Due to occupational segregation, exposure to these workplace stressors is often higher among Black and Hispanic workers, thereby contributing to health disparities.
A large proportion of workplace fatalities are also tied to mental health. In 2024, in the US, there were reported 410 workplace drug overdoses and 263 workplace suicides. The role of the workplace in these causes of death, both of which are among the leading causes of death in the United States, even when they occur outside of the workplace, has become clear. One recent study estimated that work-related factors, including chemical exposures, lack of social support, and long work hours, contribute to 10-13% of suicides. Similarly, research has revealed that the mental health impacts of factors like workplace stress and job insecurity contribute to the risk of drug overdoses. The role of the workplace in this risk for drug overdoses is seen in the fact that the loss of manufacturing jobs at the county level is associated with increases in drug overdose mortality.
It is also important to acknowledge that there is not a clear distinction between physical injury or illness and mental illness, as the Fifth Circuit Court Ruling suggests. Indeed, the very event that prompted the ruling was both a physical hazard, as shown by the resulting injuries, and a mental health hazard, as shown by the technician’s PTSD. Injuries at work have negative consequences for mental health. Research suggests that both physical and psychosocial hazards at work affect the risk of musculoskeletal disorders.
A variety of methods exist to protect workers’ mental health. In Australia, workplaces are required to minimize psychological hazards “so far as is reasonably practicable.” Reducing occupational psychosocial risks is an imperative under the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work. Denmark requires that “[a]t all stages, the work must be planned, organised and carried out in a responsible way to ensure that its impact on the psychosocial working environment is safe and healthy, individually and collectively, in both short and long term.” In the US, some states have addressed parts of the problem by including work-related PTSD in workers' compensation laws; workplace violence regulations; laws that require minimum nurse staffing levels or ban mandatory overtime for nurses; and paid sick leave, paid family leave, or coverage of domestic workers under labor laws.
Workplaces can also implement policies and programs to protect workers’ mental health. MATES in Construction is an Australian program that has since been adopted elsewhere and seeks to prevent suicide in the construction industry—an industry with the highest suicide risk in the United States—by increasing awareness of mental health challenges, reducing stigma, and connecting workers to support resources. In a similar way, Recovery Friendly Workplaces seek to create work environments that support people with substance use challenges in receiving the support and treatment they need.
While the prospect of similar regulations being applied nationally in the United States may seem bleak in the current political environment, especially following the recent Fifth Circuit Court ruling, the need to address the impact of work on mental health remains.
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With Nationwide Protections Unlikely, States Need to Step Up for Farmworkers
Farmworkers need local and state governments to come to their aid in implementing policies recognizing the urgency of lethal heat while learning from one another as they pass laws where there are none, and improving standards where they exist.
Sep 05, 2026
Have you ever had to fight off a rattlesnake in the dark while on shift? Or struggled to breathe through heart palpitations, in a remote field dozens of miles away from the nearest hospital?
Farmworkers are increasingly having these experiences as extreme heat in certain states has forced people to pick onions, grapes, and berries at night when it is cooler and the work more tolerable.
Compounding the struggle, there’s the accompanying impaired visibility and occupational safety risks for workers planting seeds and picking crops before sunrise. For those partially or primarily laboring during the day, heatwaves continue to become longer year after year, more intense, and therefore, more deadly. Making matters worse are conditions for those who work at the pace of piece rate work, which pushes farmworkers to do more and faster for potential pay fueling more intense physical labor from the workers at all given times.
In an ideal world, farmworkers would have rights and protections guaranteed by the federal government so that they could labor during the day, and if needed, at night, without risking their basic bodily integrity to bring food to our tables. In fact, in 2024 the Biden administration took steps in this direction with a proposed heat standard that would require employers to establish heat safety plans, provide water and shade, and institute paid 15-minute breaks every two hours when the heat index reaches 80°F. While a final version of the rule was proposed, it has not been finalized, which means that it remains in regulatory limbo. Moreover, with a federal government brazenly hostile to federal regulations, as evident in several environmental policy rollbacks, it is unlikely that nationwide protections for workers will come into force in the immediate future.
As of last year, most states have no legislation providing protections to workers in relation to extreme heat while working outside, inside plant nurseries, or in nighttime darkness.
Still, not all hope is lost. While federal action to the benefit of farmworkers leaves much to be desired, there has actually been significant motion at the state level. In fact, some states are actively configuring and approving heat protection standards, while others are improving upon regulations already in place.
Some states, like Arizona, mandate that employers need to provide water to workers and provide shade should temperatures rise above 100°F. The Georgia House Legislature has proposed a bill with similar specifications, but has not advanced it to be signed into law by the governor, similar to New Mexico’s proposed heat stress rule. More recently, the state of Virginia approved legislation in April 2026 directing its health and labor agencies to implement heat safety standards. Despite these positive trends, California continues to be the only state to regulate nighttime work in agriculture. California also has a much lower extreme heat stress limit for daytime work—80°F—than other states for when shaded areas must be provided.
Surprisingly, these states are outliers. As of last year, most states have no legislation providing protections to workers in relation to extreme heat while working outside, inside plant nurseries, or in nighttime darkness.
For the states that have regulations, the next step to support farmworkers is to build from this regulatory patchwork and make enforcement real. Improvement, however, is a continuous uphill climb.
Currently California is considered to be the state with the best farmworker protections, yet their agency responsible for the state’s occupational safety, Cal-OSHA, reported last year how the institution suffers from a severe lack of resources and staff. The dearth of resources is so bad that case backlogs are months long, as officials cannot spend time reviewing those that don't result in fatalities, leaving workers with limited recourse.
For other states, establishment of basic protections are still needed.
Texas, for instance, has no heat stress protections for workers. This, as the Lone Star state ranks among others like California for having the highest number of farmworkers. In 2023, the state of Texas actually took a step in the opposite direction by approving legislation restricting local governments from enacting rules that go beyond the state law, striking down some city ordinances that had previously guaranteed 10-minute water and shade breaks for some outdoor workers, such as construction workers. Accordingly, workers in this state deserve at minimum the right to access cool potable water, and time in the shade should temperatures reach a certain level.
Typically, by now the high temperature season would be wrapping up but many regions are still experiencing heatwaves. While the federal government continues to lean into deregulation, Congress recently advanced the Heat Workforce Standards Act of 2025 (HR 6213), to the House floor on July 21. If passed, this bill would prohibit the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from finalizing, implementing, or enforcing its proposed federal heat injury and illness prevention standard.
Farmworkers need local and state governments to come to their aid in implementing policies recognizing the urgency of lethal heat while learning from one another as they pass laws where there are none, and improving standards where they exist. The status quo—rattlesnakes and all—is not just absurd, but inhumane. Farmworkers deserve better.
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Workers Have No Federal Protection From the Deadliest Weather Hazard
We protect workers from ladder falls, electric shocks, even excessive noise, with clear and enforceable rules, yet there is still no federal standard requiring employers to provide the basics on dangerously hot days.
Aug 25, 2026
We are breaking past heat records, but they will not stand for long. Summer heat now arrives earlier, lasts longer, spikes higher, and lands in places that never planned for it.
For the tens of millions of Americans who work outdoors, and the millions more in warehouses, kitchens, and factories without air conditioning, there is still no federal standard requiring an employer to give a worker water, shade, rest, or training on a day when the heat can kill.
Between 1992 and 2019, more than 900 workers died from heat on the job, and every year tens of thousands more are sickened or injured—farmworkers collapsing in fields, roofers baking on exposed surfaces, laundry and dollar store workers laboring in buildings that trap heat like ovens. Those official numbers are undercounts, because heat deaths are chronically underreported.
Heat illness is not a scientific mystery. Heat stroke can kill in minutes, but staying safe is mostly about staying cool, hydrated, and getting help fast when confusion or dizziness sets in.
No one should be sent into a hotter, more volatile climate with nothing but the occasional popsicle and luck.
We protect workers from ladder falls, electric shocks, even excessive noise, with clear and enforceable rules. Yet there is still no federal standard requiring employers to provide the basics on dangerously hot days.
We came close. In 2024, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed the first-ever national heat safety standard. In 2025, the agency heard weeks of testimony from workers, doctors, unions, and employers. Then the progress on a strong rule stalled.
Now, some in Congress want to bury it for good. The House Education and the Workforce Committee recently voted to advance the Heat Workforce Standards Act, which would bar the Labor Department from finalizing or enforcing the heat rule.
This isn't a pause. It's a lock on the door, designed to stop not just this administration but any future one from protecting workers from heat. The bill's sponsor called workplace heat a problem that doesn't need solving. Easy to say when you spend every day in air conditioning. Impossible to accept when your loved one doesn't come home.
The industry groups behind the bill insist protections cost too much, the argument once made against seatbelts, hard hats, and fire exits. The numbers say otherwise. OSHA estimates a single average case of heat exhaustion costs more than $79,000 in medical bills, lost time, and lost productivity. Water and rest breaks are cheap. Hospitalizations and funerals are not.
So if Washington won't act, who will?
Investors can. Companies that get ahead of this aren't only doing right by their workers; they're managing a financial risk that shows up in turnover, litigation, and lost output. The Natural Resources Defense Council and Trillium's new guide for investors gives shareholders the questions to ask in the boardroom, and boards tend to listen when the people who own the company start asking them.
States can, and are. Seven now have heat standards, and lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Virginia are working to join them. Every state that acts protects its own workers now and builds the case that no one's safety should depend on their zip code.
The people facing this risk grow our food, build our homes, deliver our packages, and cook our meals. Many of them will not ask for water or a break today—afraid of retaliation, afraid of losing a shift, afraid of losing a paycheck they cannot afford to lose. No one should have to weigh a livelihood against a life. And no one should be sent into a hotter, more volatile climate with nothing but the occasional popsicle and luck.
Employers who resist these rules imagine that breaks cost them too much. They have it backward. Heat is already hurting both workers' health and their bottom line. Protections like water and rest don't subtract from a workday, they only help workers do their job.
The toll from this summer is still being counted. Every party to this—Congress, employers, investors, states—can still decide how high it goes.
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2 Men Were Killed by ICE on Their Way to Work; Every Employer Now Has to Pick a Side
A movement that spent years avoiding a labor identity can't afford that caution anymore.
Aug 07, 2026
Last month Immigration and Customs Enforcement killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a father and Houston construction worker, on the way to a job site. Just six days later another ICE agent fatally shot Johan Sebastián Guerrero on his way to work, who left behind a partner and 3-year-old daughter.
When I helped organize the fight for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), we put young people in caps and gowns and asked the country to see them as exceptional, college bound, English speaking, worthy of protection in a way that set them apart from the majority of undocumented people, who were not students but workers. It was a strategy built for a specific moment, and it won us what respectability politics ever can: temporary inclusion that separated us from the rest of our community. Many of us also shied away from the economic argument on principle, even though mainstream organizations were already making it, because it had become associated with more middle-of-the-road groups. We narrowed our own lane instead of widening it.
That caution has run its course. Two men were killed on their way to work within a week of each other. No amount of careful language changes it.
What's needed now is to say plainly that this happened to people doing exactly what all workers do every day, and that everyone who depends on immigrant labor, starting with employers and extending through the broader labor movement, has to decide what they owe them.
Employers, unions, and labor organizations cannot afford to look away while businesses that have relied on workers like Lorenzo and Johan for years stay quiet as their own workforce is targeted by the government.
None of this is about making immigrants prove they deserve safety by pointing to what they contribute. Nobody should have to justify their right to exist with a paycheck.
But there's a difference between demanding immigrants justify their worth and simply describing how this economy runs. Construction, hospitality, agriculture, food delivery, garment production, whole industries in this country would not function without an estimated 10 million undocumented workers, most without any union protection at all. That labor isn't a contribution to the American economy. It is the American economy.
My mother came to this country to work, and to build something for her family, and so did the workers I've spent my career organizing alongside. That desire, to work hard and provide rather than be given something, isn't unique to immigrants.
Every night, at kitchen tables across this country, whether the family is undocumented or not, people are asking each other, "How was work?"
Wanting to work and provide for the people you love is one of the most ordinary parts of being human, and there is real pride in the work itself. That labor is an identity, not just the exploitative relationship it's so often reduced to, one that wouldn't change even if our immigration status did.
I organized car wash workers in Los Angeles, in shops where owners stole wages and denied bathroom breaks because workers had no path to citizenship and no union behind them. A boss who can threaten to call ICE on one worker has leverage over the whole shop floor, and in plenty of workplaces that threat is the boss' whole labor strategy, cheaper and more effective at stopping organizing than firing people or hiring anti-union law firms ever was.
Employers have a different kind of leverage too, not the threat they can hold over a worker, but the influence of being a major employer, the kind that gets a phone call to the White House answered, or makes silence too costly to just sit on.
Last year, farmers raised alarms about the raids loudly enough that President Donald Trump's own agriculture secretary carried the message to the White House, and enforcement paused, for four days, before Stephen Miller pushed to reverse it and the raids resumed.
In Minneapolis this year, more than 60 CEOs signed a joint letter calling for "de-escalation" after federal agents killed two residents. The letter didn’t name ICE, and it didn’t ask for anything specific. The letter added to the scrutiny that was already mounting against ICE and Border Patrol after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Within a day, the Border Patrol commander was pulled from the city. Within two days, Trump himself was using the language of de-escalation. A vague joint statement helped move that. Imagine what an actual one could do.
The choice to speak up for workers, clearly and specifically, should be harder to dodge in the days since the killings of Lorenzo and Johan.
Rather than address why agents opened fire on unarmed men on their way to work, the administration's border czar, Tom Homan, went on Fox News and warned that there would be more "bloodshed" unless Democrats who criticize ICE stop talking. Homan is trying to make silence about these ICE killings the price of safety, and to put the blame for these two deaths anywhere but on the agents who pulled the trigger.
Every employer, every union, every business owner who has ever depended on an immigrant showing up to work now has to pick a side. Either stand with the workers whose labor built their businesses and industries, or fall in line behind a White House that is driving a white nationalist agenda. There is no third option where staying silent counts as staying out of it.
The administration isn't waiting to see whether employers choose workers or fall in line. The same crackdown that's killing and deporting workers who are already here is also causing real labor shortages in construction, agriculture, and dairy, and the administration has an answer for that shortage that has nothing to do with accountability.
This year alone, it has added 65,000 new H-2B guest worker visas and, for the first time, opened dairy farms to guest workers under a program where a worker's legal status, housing, and wages all depend on the same employer. Advocates have documented what that leads to for years: wage theft, confiscated passports, and workers threatened into silence because there is nowhere else for them to go.
Formerly enslaved people fought for this same principle a century and a half ago, insisting that only full citizenship, not tolerated presence, guaranteed they wouldn't be treated as less than fully human. This summer, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that exact principle when it struck down Trump's attempt to strip citizenship from children born to undocumented parents.
If the labor and immigrant rights movements don’t make the case ourselves, loudly and now, that immigrant workers deserve full rights and not just a job, that’s the model we’ll be handed. The alternative gets built for us either way, one where people are welcome only as controllable labor and for exactly as long as an employer finds them useful.
Employers, unions, and labor organizations cannot afford to look away while businesses that have relied on workers like Lorenzo and Johan for years stay quiet as their own workforce is targeted by the government. Unions and labor advocates also have a responsibility to clearly say that worker safety does not end at the shop door. Workers have the right to get to a job and get home without risking their lives.
Two men are dead because they went to work, and the mistake the immigrant rights movement cannot afford right now is forgetting that it is also a labor movement.
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It's Long Past Time to Reclaim Labor Day for the Working Class
Labor Day can be converted from just a symbolic holiday into a day of mass action, democratic deliberation, and binding commitments.
Aug 01, 2026
Unfortunately, Labor Day has become a long weekend for mattress sales and political platitudes when it should be the annual day when working people present the case for taking control of our country back from the corporatists who shape our political economy. The first Monday in September is a massive, unused civic asset, a legally recognized national holiday that could function as a recurring general assembly of America’s workers—if we choose to reclaim it.
Instead of being about the power of labor over capital, Labor Day has been domesticated into barbecues and ballgames while giant corporations tighten their grip on our economy, our governments, and the daily lives of all Americans, regardless of political labels.
Tens of millions of workers are still paid wages that cannot support a decent life, forced into permanent economic insecurity by part‑time jobs, gig “contracts,” and union‑busting consultants. Workplace democracy doesn’t exist: You are more likely to be punished for organizing a union than to be protected for exercising your basic rights. Corporate crime—tax evasions, wage theft, unsafe conditions, and violations of environmental and consumer protections—goes largely unprosecuted. At most, corporations are punished with wrist‑slap fines that CEOs quietly treat as a cost of doing business. In the richest country on Earth, we still lack universal healthcare, universal childcare, paid family leave, and a fair progressive tax system to provide needed revenues. Worker productivity rises, and the wealth of the top 1% reaches obscene levels. It is time for unions to take on the corporate predators who are wrecking our economy and democracy.
Meanwhile, politicians of both major parties take to Labor Day podiums, praise “the hardworking men and women of this country,” and then return to Washington and state capitols to do the bidding of campaign donors. They vote for trade deals that outsource jobs, deregulation that strips away workplace protections, and budgets that starve labor law enforcement. Public‑sector workers are vilified as “special interests” for wanting a decent pension.
Reclaiming Labor Day requires workers, unions, and allied organizations to decide that enough is enough and that this one annual holiday is theirs, with the media taking notice.
It does not have to be this way. Labor Day can be converted from just a symbolic holiday into a day of mass action, democratic deliberation, and binding commitments. Imagine Labor Day not as a backdrop for store sales, but as a day when a pro-worker agenda is presented. In cities and towns across the country, Labor Day could be an occasion for workers to convene meetings—at union halls, school auditoriums, public parks, and town squares—to deliver their demands to elected officials and the public.
At the center of this reclaimed Labor Day should be a Worker Compact for America—a concise, concrete program of rights, protections, and public investments that elected officials pledge, in writing, to support (see my column: "Long-Overdue Domestic Compact for America"). The Compact could include a living wage pegged to the real cost of housing, food, and healthcare; card‑check recognition and real penalties for employers who retaliate against organizing; universal healthcare as a right; paid family and medical leave; universal, publicly supported childcare; and serious criminal and civil sanctions for corporate abuses such as wage and pension theft and workplace safety violations.
Labor Day should also be the moment when workers formally summon their representatives to account. Every senator, every representative, every governor, every mayor, and every state legislator whose constituents work for a living should receive a written summons well in advance of Labor Day: “You are Summoned and morally obligated to engage with a workers’ assembly in your district on this date, at this time, to answer questions and respond to demands of the Worker Compact.” Those who appear would be questioned, on the record, about their votes and their pledges to support the Worker Compact.
Those who refuse to appear would be named from the podium and in the local media as having chosen their corporate patrons over the workers who elect them.
Unions must be at the forefront of this transformation, but they cannot do it alone. The AFL‑CIO and national unions should provide muscle, resources, and experienced organizers. Local unions, especially those that have led recent organizing drives, should be the anchors in their communities. But civic groups, faith communities, student organizations, tenant unions, consumer advocates, and environmental justice campaigns—all of them have a direct stake in a stronger labor movement and should be invited to help expose the carnage caused by unchecked Corporate Power (see the AFL-CIO’s Worker Foundation of Trump’s Second-Term Agenda).
Much of the infrastructure already exists; it is the public reshaping of Labor Day that needs to change. Parades, where they still occur, should shift from generic celebration to worker agenda‑driven demonstrations. Floats should not just carry politicians waving; they should carry workers demanding specific changes: warehouse workers calling for safe staffing, nurses calling for safe patient ratios, and transit workers calling for investment in public transportation. Marching bands can be joined by marching delegations of workers—each with their banners and demands. Voter registration tables, ballot measure petitions, and sign‑up sheets for organizing committees should line the parade routes.
Because of the election calendar, Labor Day signals the final stretch of every general election. Candidate forums convened by workers on Labor Day should not end at sundown; they should kick off sustained, workplace-based, and neighborhood‑based organizing that runs through Election Day and beyond. Every candidate who signs the Worker Compact on Labor Day should be evaluated: Did they co‑sponsor the bills they promised to support, vote the way they pledged, and stand with workers in strikes and organizing drives? The next Labor Day, those records should again be publicized.
Reclaiming Labor Day requires workers, unions, and allied organizations to decide that enough is enough and that this one annual holiday is theirs, with the media taking notice.
The question posed every first Monday in September is the old union question: Which side are you on? If we are on the side of workers, then we must act like it—organizing, summoning, demanding, and voting for candidates who stand with the workers, not the vastly under-taxed corporate predators and plutocrats.
If you are interested in organizing events in your community, contact us at LaborDay@nader.org
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