11) MILLIONS MARCH ON MAY DAY ACROSS PLANET

(The following article is from the May 16-30, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

PV combined sources

The U.S.-based National Immigrant Solidarity Network reports that May Day events and rallies were held in at least one hundred cities across the country, although fear spread by the corporate media about the H1N1 (swine flu) virus resulted in lower turnouts than in recent years. Hundreds of May Day events took place across the world, drawing tens of millions of participants.

     Many U.S. actions called for legalization of undocumented workers, and an end to the wave of anti-migrant raids and deportations which has also been growing in Canada.

     Perhaps the largest march was in Milwaukee, where over 20,000 people came out on May 1. The march was organized by Voces de la Frontera (Voices of the Border), a local immigrant rights group, with the support of trade unionists and student groups.

     In Los Angeles, nearly 10,000 hit the streets on May 1, mainly from the Latin American communities, unions, and campuses. Chicago, the birthplace of May Day, saw a march of over 5000 despite rainy weather. There were large marches in Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose, and demonstrations in cities such as New York, Washington, Miami, Houston, Denver, Minneapolis, and many others.

     May Day demonstrations and gatherings took place in at least half a dozen Canadian cities. Several thousand rallied on May 2 in Toronto, where the arrests and deportations of undocumented workers have roused widespread anger.

     About 300 trade unions and supporters turned out at the Maritime Labour Centre for the first May Day event organized in several years by the Vancouver and District Labour Council. Earlier that day, over 200 people marched through the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in support of migrant workers rights.

     Union-backed May Day actions were also held in Calgary, Winnipeg, Hamilton, and Montreal.

Latin America

About 10,000 Chileans marched in Santiago on May 1 in a protest organized by the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT), the country's largest labour confederation. CUT president Arturo Martinez demanded "a new law that distributes the wealth," the right to strike without the threat of firings and scabs, and an end to mass layoffs.

     Some 100,000 Argentine unionists gathered in Buenos Aires on Apr. 30 for an early May Day event that was in effect a rally for President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, whose populist Justicialist Party faces serious challenges in June congressional elections. "What is being debated is not the form of a model of government," said Hugo Morano, president of the General Workers Confederation (CGT). "What is being debated is the fundamental question, and it's [whether] to snatch away from us the victories we have reached in recent times. The choice is to support a national, people's model that has as its objective dignifying humans, or we go back to the decade of the '90s, where they robbed us and took everything from us."

     In Brazil, thousands of workers participated in celebrations in the main cities on May 1, with performances by musical groups and speeches by union leaders calling for economic policies to stimulate the economy in response to the crisis.

     Bolivian President Evo Morales marked May 1 by signing a decree nationalizing the local subsidiary of British aviation fuel supplier AirBP at a ceremony before a massive crowd in La Paz. Morales ordered the military and state oil company Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) to take over AirBP, which owns 12 jet fuel service stations at airports across the country. He also extended workers' benefits, requiring employers to provide mandatory severance pay after 90 months of continuous work and to provide social security coverage for temporary employees.

     Thousands of workers marched in Ecuador's main cities carrying signs with slogans such as "Let the gringos pay for the capitalist crisis." At the Quito march, Edwin Bedoya, vice president of the Unified Workers Front, praised some of the changes made by the government of leftist president Rafael Correa. "But we criticize others," Bedoya said, "like the layoffs at Petroecuador", the state-owned oil company.

     In Colombia, unions and retirees' organizations mobilized thousands of workers with slogans against unemployment, President Uribe's bid for reelection and the ongoing violence against unionists. Marchers also called for a negotiated settlement to the armed conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). "We believe that peace with social justice has to be developed here," Unitary Workers Central president Tarsicio Mora said in Bogota, calling the government's neoliberal economic model a failure.

     Unions supporting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez held a massive march in Caracas. Addressing the crowd, Chavez said, "There's no socialism without the working class... solid, conscientious, and committed to what is being born in Venezuela, which is Socialism." Beginning on May 1, a 10% increase in Venezuela's minimum wage came into effect. Another 10% increase will be implemented later this year, and Chavez also confirmed on May 1 that teachers would also receive a wage increase.

     Thousands of workers marched in 11 cities in Honduras with slogans against the US-sponsored Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

     Half a million Cubans took part in the traditional May Day march, headed by President Raul Castro, to the Plaza de la Revolucion in Havana. Slogans included calls for economic efficiency and support for the government. The marchers included 40,000 students from all educational levels and from the Union of Young Communists.

     Mexico's Congress of Labour, the independent National Workers Union, and the Mexican Union Front called off May Day activities in Mexico City following recommendations from health officials trying to control the spread of the H1N1 influenza. But more than 30,000 Mexicans marched on May 1 despite the suspension of activities in Mexico City. The largest was in Puebla, capital of the eastern central state of Puebla, where 25,000 people from 15 unions and campesino and activist groups marched to city's zocalo.

     Haitian riot police used tear gas to disperse several hundred students, teachers, unionists and others a few blocks from the National Palace in Port-au-Prince. The marchers, organized by the Collective for Another May 1 around demands to raise the minimum wage, regrouped later in the capital's main plaza, where the government was holding an agricultural and crafts fair around the theme: "solidarity between employers, workers, peasants and artisans to reinforce national production."

     In the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, some 20,000 people marked May 1 with a celebration of the 44-day general strike that won an increase in the minimum wage and price reductions for basic necessities earlier in the year. The demonstrators marched to Petit-Canal, the burial site of unionist Jacques Bino, who was killed on Feb. 17 in a night of violence during the generally peaceful strike. This was the first united May Day march for the island's leading labour organizations: the General Union of Guadeloupe Workers, the General Confederation of Labour of Guadeloupe, and the United Workers.

     In Puerto Rico the Broad Front of Solidarity and Struggle, a coalition of 22 unions, held a one-day general strike and a march to protest a plan by Gov. Luis Fortuno to respond to the economic crisis by laying off 30,000-60,000 public employees and privatizing essential public services. About 30,000 people participated in demonstrations in San Juan.

Europe

    In Turkey, 150,000 demonstrators marched in the capital, Ankara. The government had declared May Day a public holiday this year under pressure from unions.

     Transport strikes disrupted bus, train and ferry services across Greece, as well as flights by Olympic Airlines. Twenty people were injured and five arrested after police clashed with demonstrators at a labour rally in Linz in northern Austria.

     There were also marches in big cities in Spain, burdened with the highest unemployment rate in Europe. More than 10,000 people gathered in the centre of Madrid in a demonstration organised by the country's two largest trade unions.

     In Italy, union leaders shifted rallies from major cities to the earthquake-stricken town of L'Aquila as a sign of solidarity with thousands who lost their jobs after last month's deadly quake.     About two million Russians took part in celebrations of May Day, which is now officially called "Spring and Labour Day". Activities were held in over 1,000 cities and towns. Many of these events were not political, but several thousand demonstrators gathered at the statue of Karl Marx in Moscow waving banners and red Soviet flags.

     In France, eight labour federations joined for united May Day demonstrations to protest government and corporate policies on the economic crisis.

     "Labour is changing; for the first time in perhaps decades, we are in agreement at the core," said Francois Chereque, secretary general of the Confederation Francaise Democratique du Travail. "There is a strong unity among the unions."

     Labour unrest is on the rise in France, as seen with demonstrations, general strikes, and "bossnappings," where workers hold company executives hostage to force negotiations on job cuts and plant closings. The Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT) estimated 1.2 million people marched in 283 demonstrations on May 1, five times as many as in 2008.