Like millions of other young women in Bangladesh, Sumi Abedin forged her place in the modern economy at a sewing machine inside an urban garment factory.

The ready-made garment industry now accounts for a whopping 80 percent of Bangladesh's exports, making the country the third largest exporter...

WASHINGTON -- Tyrika Meade started working at the sunglass stand in Union Station six weeks ago. She said she earns $8.25 an hour on an irregular schedule.

"I like the job but the pay is just not right," Meade, 19, said in an interview.

So she joined an estimated...

Huma Abedin, longtime friend of the Clintons and wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, enjoyed an arrangement to work as an adviser in the State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while still consulting for private clients, Politico first reported Thursday.

Abedin was employed as a "special...

WASHINGTON -- In a sign of how organized labor is trying to spread its roots more broadly in the progressive movement, Fred Azcarate, a longtime labor leader who's been heading the AFL-CIO's jobs campaign, is leaving the union federation to take the helm at USAction, a 21-state federation of community...

Walmart announced Tuesday that it plans to develop its own safety program to address dangerous working conditions in factories in Bangladesh, where the collapse of a garment factory complex last month took the lives of more than 1,100 people.

In a press release, Walmart said it...

WASHINGTON -- With the Senate about to consider President Obama's nominees to the National Labor Relations Board, Democrats and labor groups are growing concerned that Republicans will block the administration's left-leaning nominations, rendering the board inoperable once a current member's term expires in August.

The five-member board, which is tasked...

Fast-fashion retailer H&M has agreed to sign onto a binding accord to improve working conditions in Bangladesh garment factories, a move that labor advocates hope will set an example for other major clothing brands in the wake of the Rana Plaza disaster.

In committing to what's known as...

WASHINGTON -- As part of their efforts to rebrand the GOP as a more caring party, House Republicans passed a hotly debated bill Wednesday that would loosen federal overtime laws, allowing for "comp" time instead of pay for private-sector employees who work more than 40 hours in a week.

Although...

Whenever he clocked out after his 12-hour shift at an Amazon warehouse, Jesse Busk had one more critical task to perform before he could hop into his car and head home to sleep: Pass through the sprawling warehouse security checkpoint.

The purpose of the checkpoint was to prevent workers like...

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, revealed an interview on Sunday with a high-ranking U.S. diplomat in Libya who contradicted the White House's initial version of events after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi in September.

According to...

WASHINGTON -- Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) said Sunday that Democrats may see a 2016 "faceoff" between Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden, noting that Biden has "always wanted to be president."

"I was with him Friday morning," Richardson said of his friend on ABC's "This Week."...

WASHINGTON -- Describing a sound immigration system as critical to economic growth, renowned investor Warren Buffett said Sunday that it's time lawmakers in Washington establish "a more logical immigration policy" to attract talent to the U.S. workforce.

"We've been bouncing this one around for a considerable period of time," Buffett...

WASHINGTON -- Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sunday that the recent Israeli strikes in Syria will "put more pressure" on the Obama administration to send aid to rebels fighting in the country's bloody civil war.

"One of things I worry about is incremental escalation," McCain told host Chris Wallace on...

Major clothing brands like to say they have a system in place to avoid doing business with overseas suppliers that mistreat their workers: The corporate-funded factory audit, performed by credentialed inspectors and designed to weed out bad actors.

But for the past six years, Abu Bakar, a Bangladeshi garment worker...

Whenever impoverished garment workers die while making clothes for wealthier consumers in far-off lands, competing clothing brands manage to come together over a high-minded common cause: Better scrutiny of the overseas plants that produce their garments, to avoid putting vulnerable workers in harm's way.

But in the wake of an...

The climbing death toll in the wake of a massive building collapse in Bangladesh has put increasing pressure on Western retailers to commit themselves to safety improvements in the country's garment facilities.

As of now, the contributions made by U.S. and European brands toward safeguarding Bangladeshi...

WASHINGTON -- Nearly two weeks after a massive explosion at a West, Texas, fertilizer plant took at least 15 lives and destroyed entire neighborhoods, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are starting to call for investigations into the government's workplace and chemical safety regulations to determine how they might have prevented the...

WASHINGTON -- Federal officials said they hope a renovated building at 18th and F streets Northwest in downtown Washington will embody a new streamlining of the federal workforce, accomplishing the proverbial "more with less" in an age of budget battles and sequestration. In fact, it may epitomize the era a...

WASHINGTON -- Hoping to get a lift from the changing tides on gay marriage, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation Thursday that would ban job discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, has been introduced in Congress regularly since the mid-1990s without...

Ernest Hampson has been working at Guitar Center for six years, not a brief span in the world of retail. During that time, the 26-year-old Brooklyn resident said he's seen a pattern emerge for many workers at the nation's largest music equipment retailer.

"Guitar Center workers are doing more...