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 1st 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.

On May 1st of this year, Labor Councils from Milwaukee to North Carolina, from United Food & Commercial Workers’ UFCW Locals to Teachers’ Unions, marched 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, Service Employees International Union, Teachers, Unite HERE and the Amalgamated Transit Union were in the lead, showing what’s possible.

In temperatures of minus-30 degrees, more than 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 National AFL-CIO has documented Working Women and People of Color stand to lose the most as employers race to deploy Artificial Intelligence (AI) - 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.

To Continue Reading This Labor News Story, Go To: May Day 2026: U.S. labor movement reclaims International Workers’ Day – People's World And For More, Go To: Hundreds Of Thousands March In May Day “Workers Over Billionaires” Boycott — Schools Shut Across Five States As NEA Leads Largest Labor Mobilization In A Decade - USA Herald