Untold numbers of fast food, home care and nursing home workers in 15 cities across the U.S. stage a one-day strike in support of a $15 minimum wage. 2021

John J. Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2009, dies at age 86. The son of Irish immigrants — his father was a bus driver, his mother a domestic worker — Sweeney worked for the Intl. Ladies Garment Workers then the Service Employees, where he served as president, before his time at the AFL-CIO. 2021

Newly-elected President Joe Biden, on his first day in office after defeating Donald J. Trump, orders the firing of National Labor Relations Board general counsel Peter Robb. Robb had earlier worked as a union-busting lawyer and in the NLRB post “had spent three years attacking workers’ right to organize and engage in collective bargaining,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said, in welcoming Biden’s action. 2021