The U.S. economy gained 313,000 jobs in February, and unemployment was unchanged at 4.1%, according to figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice signed legislation Tuesday giving all state employees a 5% pay raise, the direct result of a heroic teacher strike that lasted nearly two weeks and highlighted the plight of low pay and rising health care costs in the Mountain State.

Today is International Women’s Day, and there is no better time to lift up the role unions play in achieving economic equality for women. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research recently released a brief, titled The Union Advantage for Women, which quantifies the benefits of union membership for working women, and the numbers don’t lie!

February marked the 50th anniversary of the start of the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis, Tennessee, a unionization attempt by public-sector workers that drew support from civil and labor rights leaders across the nation. Martin Luther King Jr., in town to organize a march in support of those strikers, was assassinated on April 4 of that year. This post commemorates these anniversaries and the historic links between civil rights and workers' rights, especially at a time when the right of public-sector workers to unionize is being argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. This post is excerpted from a forthcoming memoir, Climbing Up the Rough Side of the Mountain, by civil rights and labor activists Norman Hill and Velma Murphy Hill.

Ahead of the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis' election, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka praised the pontiff’s leadership and legacy, in an event at Seton Hall University. He was joined by Cardinal Joseph Tobin, archbishop of Newark; Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey; and Mary Meehan, Ph.D., interim president of Seton Hall, each of whom delivered remarks to commemorate the Holy Father's leadership of the Roman Catholic Church.