Workers Across America Embrace May Day Tradition
Tens of thousands of people across the country rally for International Workers’ Day, celebrating our shared struggle.
On Thursday, in hundreds of cities in America, thousands of people took to the streets to rally for May Day, an international celebration of workers. Many make the connection that this is just Labor Day in May, and that would be correct. Internationally, most countries celebrate workers on May 1st, and this included America until 1886, when, that year, violence broke out in Chicago as police tried to suppress a protest for the 8-hour work day violently. Since then, the government has not recognized the holiday, instead, it moving it to September to decouple the American workers’ struggle for labor rights from the rest of the world. This has not stopped American workers and students from celebrating it and holding strikes against the corporations that leech off us for profit.
Shawn Fain, President of the UAW Union, has taken the initiative to revitalize American labor power. Fain announced in 2023 a plan to organize as many unions as possible to end their contracts on May 1st, 2028, leading to a general strike. Such a mass strike could threaten to bring the economy to a halt, thus forcing corporations and the government to make massive concessions to the working class. It’s an ambitious plan, but one with deep history, as workers worldwide have allied to withhold their labor to force change in society.
During the German Revolution of 1918, a general strike was called by sailors revolting against the German Empire, as winning the First World War proved hopeless. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, railway workers began a general strike to resist the Tsar in solidarity with the revolutionaries. The largest general strike in world history was five years ago in India when 250 million workers took to the streets, organized by the Communist Party alongside ten major unions, shutting down the country’s economy to resist Prime Minister Modi’s anti-worker policies and privatization plans.
In 1945 and 1946, a massive strike wave in America rocked the corporate establishment to its core. Over 4.5 million workers across the country in the oil, automotive, film, electric, meatpacking, steel, coal, railroad, mining, and other industries joined in solidarity to gain concessions. Unions banded together by striking simultaneously to increase pressure on companies, something unprecedented on this scale in America. This was a historic moment in American history, and it was met with brutal resistance by police and legislation to stomp out the hot embers of worker power. This led to the passing of the Taft-Hartley Act the following year, which outlawed certain kinds of strikes and outright banned general strikes. President Truman vetoed the bill, stating that it was a “dangerous intrusion on free speech,” but Congress overrode it with the help of Democrats. The law has hung over the labor movement as a sort of big red button to shut down mass labor action that Presidents have used 37 times since its passing.
This year’s May Day was marked by a monumental three-day strike by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Los Angeles that demanded the county respect fair labor laws. Negotiations between the union and the city have stalled as the city refuses to come to the table and has opted for retaliatory measures instead. Half the city’s workers, representing about 55,000 employees, walked off the job on May Day, and over 10,000 marched downtown.
The SEIU also proved that they would not simply march but disrupt the status quo. Not only did their march temporarily shut down the city by depriving the government of their labor, but they physically took up space marching through the streets and disrupting business as usual. They deliberately engaged in civil disobedience, going beyond the planned boundaries of the strike by blocking traffic, where 14 strikers were arrested. This action, though small, represents the power dynamic between the city and its workers, the police and the workers. In its current arrangement, the government is not on the side of workers, and the police, doing the city’s bidding, are not on the side of the workers.
Something that Shawn Fain and the UAW have thoroughly maintained over the years is that this is not left versus right, it’s the rich versus the poor. And that isn’t a statement about being ‘independent’ either, it’s about standing in solidarity with the bottom-up struggles that affect our brothers, sisters, and siblings in this country and the world. This is a thread of the progressive Stop Oligarchy Tour led by Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, calling for independent candidates and grassroots working-class people to challenge establishment politicians. The pair held a rally in Philadelphia on May Day, bringing together 5,000 people to symbolically pass the torch to the next generation of grassroots leaders. However, rallies like that are not enough at the national level; there has to be a mass coalition, a new Workers Party to uproot the establishment of both corporate wings.
A labor struggle to reclaim our government, our rights, and our leisure time cannot rely on fallible politicians and leaders; it must be a community effort. That community cannot exclude people and struggles, or else it’s doomed to fail by division. On that same day in Philly, thousands more were taking to the streets to celebrate May Day as an international struggle that included Palestinians who are subject to genocide in Gaza. On this issue, Sanders has been wholly inadequate, staying silent on the issue for months after it began, and still refuses to call it a genocide recognized by multiple human rights organizations. Refusing to combine labor with the most intense anti-war movement since the Iraq War is an utter failure on the part of Sanders and AOC. These are deeply interconnected struggles and there’s a serious problem if Sean Fain and the UAW, a bipartisan union, is willing to call a genocide a genocide, but not the most progressive Senator. We cannot build a working class in America with the bombs used to murder the working class in Palestine, Yemen, Sudan, or anywhere else.
If workers want to win over the capitalist greed that rots the core of this country, we need to make demands as a united working class, which includes us and all the workers of the world. This means that no politician or leader in any political position should be beholden to corporations or shy away from difficult issues. Never again can we elect a person to office who doesn’t serve us. As workers, we have far more power; we just have to use it.