During National Nurses Week, we celebrate heroes who bring compassion, competence and courage to their jobs every day and for whom healing us and their communities is a calling.

No wonder Americans, year after year, cite nursing among the professions they trust the most.

Public service workers across the country are losing their foothold in the middle class. So says an article in The New York Times this week that serves as a reminder of why labor unions are more needed now than ever.

As Women's History Month draws to a close it's imperative that we not only look back at the women in labor who got us to where we are today, but that we look ahead to the women in labor who are carrying the torch to where we want to be. 

This month, we honor pioneers like Frances Perkins who, as the Secretary of Labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt, was the first woman ever to be appointed to a presidential cabinet position; and Alice Paul, a New Jersey woman who was the chief strategist in the campaign for women’s right to vote.