Every year on May 1, we celebrate International Workers’ Day to commemorate workers securing an eight-hour workday. While Labor Day has become a more prominent holiday in the United States, May Day has deep meaning going back to 1886 after the resistance of Black, white and immigrant workers in Haymarket Square in Chicago.
The labor movement has a lot to celebrate this May Day. Whether it’s autoworkers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, film crews in Hollywood, hotel workers in Las Vegas or baristas at the local coffee shop, workers are standing together in historic ways to improve our jobs, change our lives, and build worker power.
We’re also celebrating the victories that come from having the most pro-union president in U.S. history. The Biden administration has shown a historic commitment to creating good union jobs in the clean energy economy and protecting the rights of all workers, regardless of immigration status. Just this past week, the Biden administration restored and extended overtime eligibility protections for millions of workers, banned noncompete agreements that trap workers into bad jobs, and required retirement advisers to put their customers’ interests first.
The president is on our side—and America’s people are on our side.
But we still have work to do this May Day.
Around the world, workers’ lives, livelihoods and rights are under attack. Climate disasters and conflicts are displacing more and more people from their homes, and are increasing risks for workers.
Temporary protected status (TPS) is a key tool to support our fight for worker justice at home and abroad. New and renewed TPS status for all unsafe countries will bolster our efforts to build worker power and hold employers accountable for egregious violations of our labor and employment laws.
Despite increasing evidence of our nation’s reliance on immigrant workers to help fuel our economy, despicable efforts to villainize and dehumanize immigrants continue to escalate. Working people know better than to fall for those divide-and-conquer tactics.
Immigrants aren’t blocking us from having good jobs—greedy and abusive bosses are. And the only way we win the good jobs workers expect and deserve is through unity.
Globally, we are part of a shared worker struggle. To push back against the forces seeking to exploit our land and our labor, we must stand united across borders.
On May Day, we renew our call for worker justice, climate justice and migrant justice—all of which are deeply connected.