For most of the 20th century, May Day—International Workers’ Day—was largely absent from the official calendar of the U.S. labor movement. While workers around the globe marched on May 1 to honor the martyrs of Chicago’s 1886 Haymarket uprising, bosses here at home pushed their employees to only observe Labor Day in September, leaving May Day—the original workers’ holiday—to the left, immigrant rights activists, and the occasional socialist rally.
That era is over.
This May 1, labor councils from Milwaukee to North Carolina, from UFCW locals to teachers’ unions, are marching with a demand that cuts to the heart of today’s crisis: Workers Over Billionaires. The scale and character of this year’s mobilizations represent something new: the formal re-entry of U.S. organized labor into International Workers’ Day, on a national scale, for the first time in generations.
When the people of Minnesota shut down their state to protest ICE occupation in January, the AFL-CIO, SEIU, Teachers, Unite HERE, and ATU were in the lead, showing what’s possible. In temperatures of -30 degrees, over 100,000 workers and residents marched and brought much of the economy there to a halt, forcing a partial federal retreat. That action is the model for today.
The demands workers are carrying into the streets reflect the weight of the current moment. Corporations are waging a coordinated offensive on wages and benefits even as profits soar. The AFL-CIO has documented that working women and people of color stand to lose the most as employers race to deploy artificial intelligence—often without workers’ consent—to hire, monitor, evaluate, and even fire employees.
Nearly 80% of those who will see their jobs erased by AI in the next decade could be earning less than $38,000 a year. Unions from the Longshoremen to the Las Vegas Culinary workers have begun writing AI protections directly into contracts, requiring bargaining before any AI implementation.
Meanwhile, corporations have raced to roll back DEI commitments and equal-opportunity programs with barely a word of public accountability. Workers and community groups are boycotting the companies leading that retreat, particularly Target. And immigrants from coast to coast continue to be marked for deportation and harassment as the ruling class tries to split workers and turn us against one another.
The international dimension of this May Day cannot be separated from the domestic one. The Trump administration’s military intervention in Venezuela showed that this government has no respect for the law. An oil blockade now squeezes Cuba, which has faced more than 65 years of economic siege simply for choosing to build a sovereign nation.
And the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran—whose workers have long suffered under sanctions—makes an anti-war labor movement a necessity. With the Trump administration demanding a new $1.5 trillion military budget—paid for with cuts to our education, health care, and other services, it’s clear that his wars are an attack on the entire working class, both abroad and here at home.
This May Day, labor is calling on working people to demand that elected officials—from city councils to Congress—stand up to the attack on working people. The movement’s pledge—No Work, No School, No Shopping—is an explicit exercise of the main power workers have: the collective withdrawal of their labor.
The demands are concrete and winnable: Pass the PRO Act, tax the wealthy, fully fund public schools and healthcare, protect immigrant workers, end the wars, halt the AI free-for-all, restore equal opportunity on the job, and save constitutional democracy.
Wealthy corporations and businesses are leveraging their influence to stifle worker power and rig the rules of the economy in their favor. They want to undo the progress the labor movement has made over decades to gain livable wages, high-quality health care, retirement security, and stronger protections on the job. But history is on our side, and we refuse to go back.
May Day began in the USA. This year, it comes home.
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