May Day

What happened to our celebration of May Day? The celebration of workers’ pride. I know when I worked, we all wore our hard hats with union stickers indicating our locals. We never took them off when we went to get a drink or take a break or had lunch. It was a symbol of pride. I remember in school during the 1950s, we celebrated May Day, but from I’ve seen, it’s not celebrated or explained in school. Some teachers might have the young students make spring hats, but that has nothing to do with why May Day was established. May Day or Workers’ Day or International Workers’ Day is a celebration of the historic struggles gains made by workers. In the U.S., May Day became a day to celebrate workers/laborers in 1889 to commemorate the Chicago Haymarket Riot of 1886. Today, celebrating May Day is done all over the world except, apparently, here in the U.S. If seems as if workers are looked down upon with disdain, like losers for not working harder to become rich like others have achieved. Most millionaires and billionaires did not start at the bottom of the rung. They inherited their wealth initially. The rest of us were lucky if we had a change of clothes when we left home. Workers are now starting to see just what the corporations and right wing gop are and have been doing to them during the years. They have shown themselves to be bought and paid for by corporations, and have been working diligently to undermine and eliminate the safeguards put in place to protect workers: the safety laws, minimum wages, and now eliminating the child labor laws as is happening in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and Arkansas. Shasta County workers have gone on strike and timed it to begin on May Day. With three county supervisors representing the extreme right and dismantling the county governance, to include employee pay and benefits. The union tried to negotiate with the county, but failed. The Writers Guild of America (GWA) started its strike today. They are striking against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which protects the interests of the studios and streamers and not the ones who create the content. When negotiations failed with the AMPTP, the members held an online voting for a week at the end 97.85 of the GWA members voted for a strike. University workers by the thousands are on strike for pay increases to compensate for increases in cost of living and high inflation rates. Among the university strikes is the University of California system, which has the distinction of being the largest higher education strike in history. Starbucks employees continue to strike despite its owner Howard Schultz raising the wages of some workers at shops not trying to unionize. American society, like all societies, is divided into two classes—the exploiters and the exploited; the capitalists and the workers. Our young people with the skills and abilities of the new technological are learning there are ways of winning the class war on workers. They are joining or forming unions in some of the large and small corporations. They are demanding better contracts when working in special districts (such as water or fire), cities, counties, states and federal government agencies. So we all need to support our workers, especially the young workers, seeking a better life, they are the ones who will be taking care of the aging population. This is what May Day is all about. A couple of good history and playbooks by historians are the 1964 publication, Rebel Voices, An IWW Anthology by Joyce L. Kornbluh and History of the Labor Movement in the United States (Vol. 4) by Philip S. Foner.