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War and Workers’ Rights Highlight May Day Celebrations |
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Workers around the globe today are celebrating International Labor Day, better known as May Day, to make it clear they want to live in a world where people live in peace and prosperity.
On the U.S. West Coast, thousands of dockworkers are participating in a voluntary action by members of the Longshore Division of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). The workers are refusing to work on the docks for eight hours today to demand that the United States immediately end the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and withdraw U.S. troops from the Middle East.
Union President Robert McElrath said in a press release:
We are supporting the troops and telling politicians in Washington that it’s time to end the war in Iraq.
The dockworkers’ action has drawn support from workers throughout the country, including the Washington State Labor Council and the Martin Luther King Jr. County Labor Council in Seattle. Workers in Seattle will march along the waterfront to demand an end not only to the war in Iraq but also to the war on workers, both here and abroad.
The Vermont AFL-CIO also endorsed the action, saying the war in Iraq is “immoral, unwanted and unnecessary.” The Vermont resolution adds that the war will only be brought to an end by “the direct actions of working people.”
In San Francisco, members of the Letter Carriers (NALC) Branch 214 will observe two minutes of silence in all carrier stations at 8:15 a.m. PDT in support of the dockworkers. The San Francisco Labor Council endorsed the Letter Carriers’ action. Members of the NALC in Greensboro, N.C., and the New York Metro Area local of the Postal Workers also will observe a period of silence.
The AFL-CIO Executive Council last year approved a statement saying that the war in Iraq is turning into a civil war and it’s time for the United States to end its military involvement there.
The plight of the nation’s workers was also in the spotlight today. Speaking during an International Workers’ Day symposium on “Global Capital—Global Unions,” at the National Labor College, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka says the battle for workers’ rights and an economy that works for everyone transcends politics.
The progressive movement must directly challenge the policies of the corporate agenda. However, challenging the corporate agenda requires more than throwing out Republicans and electing Democrats. Important players in both parties champion the corporate agenda, advanced most powerfully and consistently by Wall Street.
We have to dismantle the corporate agenda and install a working families agenda so that we can re-establish the balance of power between workers and their employers, rebuild the relationship between wage growth and productivity, and restore the American Dream.
May Day is the day that most nations around the world honor workers, but it is not officially observed in the United States, which celebrates Labor Day in September. That historical quirk is no accident.
Ironically, “May Day” was founded by U.S. workers—and taken away from them as a day to celebrate by a federal government fearful of the wave of large demonstrations for the eight-hour workday and massive strikes for justice on the railroads, in the mines and factories that had begun in 1877. Click here to learn more about the history of May Day.
On this May Day, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) called for decent work for everyone. In a statement, the ITUC says:
For most of the world’s people, decent work is but a distant dream. Millions of children are at work instead of school, workers are deprived of their fundamental rights and subject to exploitation by unscrupulous employers and repressive regimes, and inequality is growing within and between countries as a small minority accumulates incalculable wealth at the expense of others. The means to deal with all these challenges exist, but the political will to resist the powerful interests that stand in the way of progress is lacking.
We demand a fundamental change to global governance, putting decent work at the core of a new globalization and making the global institutions respond to the real needs of people instead of following the erroneous policies of the past.
In other May Day events, the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center is sponsoring an art exhibit in the lobby of the federation’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. The exhibit features pictures of workers around the world on the job. The pictures were taken by their co-workers as part of a Solidarity Center project to document what workers’ lives are really like in the global economy.
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Wow—May Day was mentioned in an official AFL-CIO organ! We have made progress!
It is sad that the Federation’s acknowledgement of this revolutionary workers’ day crumbled under the weight of McCarthyism and the Cold War and took decades to recover. It is high time that we all acknowledge May Day as the real labor day—the one that was created under fire. Sure, we should all march on Labor Day, but never in place of May Day. Remember that the first May Day occured in 1886, on this tradtional day of re-birth, and while there was a New York City Labor Day parade in 1882, it was not annual and not an official national holiday for years. May Day never stopped being a day of the worker—but our government has attempted to disappear it. They’ve claimed it was imported by foreign anarchists and communists. But May Day is as American as apple pie and surely our finest export. And it was anarchists and communists and socialists that actually built up the US labor movement–home grown or immigrant.
Don’t forget to wear red today and try to get to one of the many May Day events occuring all around the US. May is Labor History month and you’ll find May Day happenings occuring for weeks to come. We cannot allow the reactionaries to continue to steal May Day from the workers—to hell with the artificial “Loyalty Day”–let’s march on May Day…for workers’ rights, immigrants rights, an end to war and the start of social change!
In Solidarity,
John Pietaro - www.flamesofdiscontent.org
Considering the vicious anti-labor, unconstitutional, pro-war actions of Bush and his administration all U.S. workers should commemorate May Day!
Brother Pietara hit the nail on the head! All workers American and from abroad are brothers and sisters and we must act as one! Just like the big corporations do. SOLIDARITY FOREVER!
ON THE FIRST MAYDAY IN 1886 IN CHICAGO MARCHERS WERE SINGING THIS SONG:
We mean to make things over, we are tired of toil for naught,
With but bare enough to live upon, and never an hour for thought;
We want to feel the sunshine, and we want to smell the flowers,
We are sure that God has will’d it, and we mean to have eight hours.
We’re summoning our forces from the shipyard, shop and mill,
Chorus
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will!
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will!
The beasts that graze the hillside, and the birds that wander free,
In the life that God has meted have a better lot than we.
Oh! hands and hearts are weary, and homes are heavy with dole;
If our life’s to be filled with drudgery, what need of a human soul!
Shout, shout the lusty rally from the shipyard, shop and mill,
Chorus
The voice of God within us is calling us to stand
Erect, as is becoming to the work of his right hand,
Should he, to whom the Maker his glorious image gave,
The meanest of his creatures crouch, a bread and butter slave!
Let the shout ring down the valleys and echo from ev’ry hill,
Chorus
Ye deem they’re feeble voices that are raised in Labor’s cause?
But bethink ye of the torrent, and the wild tornado’s laws!
We say not Toil’s uprising in terror’s shape will come,
Yet the world were wise to listen to the monitory hum,
Soon, soon the deep-toned rally shall all the nations thrill,
Chorus
From factories and workshops, in long and weary lines,
From all the sweltering forges, and from out the sunless mines,
Wherever toil is wasting the force of life to live,
There the bent and battered armies come to claim what God doth give,
And the blazon on their banner doth with hope the nations fill,
Chorus
Hurrah, hurrah, for Labor! for it shall arise in might;
It has filled the world with plenty, it shall fill the world with light;
Hurrah, hurrah, for Labor! it is mustering all its powers,
And shall march along to victory with the banner of Eight Hours!
Shout, shout the echoing rally till all the welkin thrill,
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will!
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will!
DAVID HURLBURT CWA LOCAL 9410