This afternoon, 40,000 working people at AT&T announced they were going on strike. After months at the bargaining table, the employees haven't been able to win a fair union contract. AT&T's leaders seem dead set on lining their own pockets at the expense of workers making them billions.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka attended the Labour 20 conference last week in Germany, where he hand-delivered petition signatures to Chancellor Angela Merkel on behalf of workers at T-Mobile and Volkswagen, seeking justice for the working people employed by the German companies in the United States. Skilled trades workers at Volkswagen's Chattanooga, Tennessee, plant voted in 2015 to join a union, but the company refuses to negotiate with them. Among other complaints, T-Mobile was ordered last month by a federal administrative judge to shut down an illegal union set up by management.

Mondelēz International’s offshoring of jobs and the company’s relentless cost-cutting came under repeated criticism at the Mondelēz annual shareholder meeting on May 17 in Lincolnshire, Ill. Outside the shareholder meeting, members of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM), United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and other unions protested the company’s 2016 decision to move 600 Nabisco factory workers’ jobs from the Southside of Chicago to Salinas, Mexico.

As we look back at the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance’s first action at the founding convention to march for justice after the beating of Rodney King 25 years ago, we’re proud of our deep roots of solidarity and resistance. Today, with millions of people mobilizing in marches and protests across the nation, from the Women’s March to the People’s Climate March, we are living in a time where we cannot stand silent when Muslim, immigrant, refugee, women and LGBTQ communities are constantly under attack. As a refugee from Ethiopia and an immigrant from the Philippines — and both as parents — we take these attacks personal and are concerned about the type of world our own children are growing up in.

John Sayles—who will appear at the May 16 DC LaborFest screening of "Matewan"—is an American independent film director, screenwriter, editor, actor and novelist. He has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for "Passion Fish" and "Lone Star." The screening is Tuesday, May 16, 7 p.m. at AFI Silver Theatre; tickets here. Sayles will receive the LaborFest’s Tony Mazzocchi Labor Arts Award and do a Q&A after the film.