Labor Day

Last September, at a speech in New York focused on global labor rights, President Biden encouraged leaders and organizations to commit to a future where workers around the world would be treated with dignity and respect. "Our economies and our nations," he said, "will all be stronger because of it."

As we commemorate Labor Day, workers around the world are fighting to bring about safer, fairer, and more equitable working conditions for their communities - and in the process, they are helping build a healthier, more secure, and more prosperous world for everyone. Here in the United States, for example, many labor protections and benefits - including overtime pay, retirement benefits, workplace safety regulations, and the right to organize and bargain collectively - were born from the tireless efforts and organizing of workers and their unions. Despite progress over decades, many in the United States still lack access to protections such as paid sick leave and parental leave, and many still endure labor rights abuses.

Around the world as workers campaign, organize, advocate, and agitate for change, they face immense risks - risks to their job security, their physical safety, and their freedom. Unions remain under attack in many countries, facing bureaucratic or legal barriers to being registered or advocating for their members. Workers of countless nationalities face backlash not only for confronting employers about abusive labor practices, but even for discussing their rights and experiences in the first place. And from Guatemala to Bangladesh, activists have been detained, arrested, and even murdered for speaking out on behalf of workers facing harm or abuse while on the job.

This Administration is deeply committed to advancing labor rights around the world, including through President Biden's recent Memorandum on Advancing Worker Empowerment, Rights, and High Labor Standards Globally(link is external). This Memorandum directs USAID and all U.S. government agencies engaged abroad to do more to protect workers' rights - from freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining, to the elimination of employment discrimination and all forms of forced or compulsory labor. USAID is taking this challenge seriously, underscoring the U.S. government's conviction that workers and labor organizations are key defenders of democracy. In Nepal, for example, USAID's Global Labor Program is working with local trade unions to help the country's informal workers establish residency and access union identification cards, which allows them to receive social security benefits. And in South Africa, USAID provided technical support and legal expertise to domestic workers - many of whom are women and often work long hours for low pay - as they fought for their rights to workers' compensation. Today, thanks to years of tireless advocacy by unions and activists, domestic workers across the nation can make claims for injury and illness on the job - and they are legally covered by South Africa's national minimum wage legislation, an important step to ending decades of underpayment within the sector.