In honor of May Day

In 1889 the international socialist movement designated May First as a day to honor the struggles and achievements of the working class. This call was in commemoration of the Haymarket Martyrs: eight workers, five of them immigrants, who were variously imprisoned, deported, or executed for crimes they did not commit in a climate of fierce anti-immigrant and anti-union scapegoating.

Facing execution, one of them, August Spies, delivered an address in which he famously declared:

If you think that by hanging us, you can stamp out the labor movement – the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live in want and misery – the wage slaves – expect salvation – if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there, and there, and behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out.

Spies lived in a different era, but there are unmistakable continuities with our own: cavernous gaps between rich and poor, naked government corruption and patronage, systematic injustice, genocidal colonialism, and demonization and criminalization of those who dare to speak the truth. Also, especially since the mass “hands off” protests of April 5, the re-ignition of the subterranean fire of resistance.

Trump’s new golden age is modeled on the “Gilded Age” that Spies endured. Deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, public spending cuts for everyone else—these are designed to remove all obstacles to rampant capitalist greed, including (already inadequate) protections and rights for workers. This amounts to a massive assault on the working class: decimation of the public sector; mass layoffs of federal workers; attacks on public health and education; dismantling of benefits; criminalization of diversity, equity and inclusion; rollback of disability rights, reproductive rights and trans rights; and the removal of environmental protections. If successful, Trump’s agenda would return us to nineteenth century levels of poverty, exploitation, repression, and pollution.

Trump’s vicious targeting of specific scapegoated groups goes hand in hand with a broad assault on all workers. The attack on transgender people is an attack on bodily autonomy and gender equity, the attack on migrants is an attack on the freedom to move and work with dignity, and the attack on Palestine solidarity is an attack on civil liberties and the right to organize.

There is no popular mandate for any of this. As even Fox news puts it, “The most recent national public opinion polls suggest that Americans aren’t thrilled with the job the president is doing.” The first two months of Trump’s reign saw much of the establishment—universities, law schools, judges and politicians—preemptively surrendering.  Many people of conscience have been immobilized by the scale and rapidity of the onslaught. But recent weeks have seen an outpouring of dissent both from sections of the establishment and on the streets. We are now seeing opposition from above—Harvard University, Wall Street , the courts—and from below—hundreds of thousands of people joining protests across the country.

The mass protests on the streets offer immense hope for building an alternative to Trump’s regime. This is no time for sectarian abstention. We should direct all our energies into participating in the protests and helping to build deep and wide movements from below that are democratic, accountable, and independent of the two political parties. The overwhelming pressure from above will be to limit our horizons and funnel mass opposition back into the very same failed institutions that got us into this mess in the first place. Politicians, university bosses, and New York Times columnists are not going to save us. We can only save ourselves. And we are best positioned to do that as workers organizing collectively.

The most inspiring current examples of resistance from below are combining the mass anger and energy of anti-Trump street protests with the strength and collective power of organized labor. Think of the magnificent work of the LA Teachers Union (UTLA) in defending students against the DHS. Or the ten national unions who have pledged non-cooperation with ICE. Or the May Day Strong coalition launched by the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) which connects labor with immigrant, transgender and women’s rights, racial justice and Palestine solidarity.

These struggles share the internationalist spirit that animated the original May Day. Given that Trump’s attack is centered on demonization of Palestinians and a crackdown on immigrants, who are essentially international workers, it can’t be defeated by the “America first” populist nationalism of the sort advocated by UAW’s Sean Fain. The way out of the international crisis of late-neoliberalism and the international rise of right-wing authoritarianism cannot be a return to narrow nationalism and alignment with competing imperial blocs.

International workers remain the only social force with the power to change the balance of forces. Much as the Trump regime would like to get rid of workers altogether, they can’t. Even under right-wing authoritarianism, the system needs labor to produce everything, as was demonstrated in the “day without immigrants” protests of earlier this year (and before that, 2017 and 2006). Without workers there are no Teslas, no houses, no hospitals, no food, no White House. The source of all profit is labor, so even at a moment when labor is weak overall, workers have the potential power to bring the system to a halt. But that power is only realized through collective organization.

For this reason, the labor movement is our most powerful resource in the struggle against Trump. Unions are the organized wing of labor, and since they were first established in the mid- nineteenth-century, they have played a key role in setting the bar for worker pay and conditions. As the slogan goes: “The labor movement: the folks who brought you the weekend!” The labor movement also won benefits, paid time off, restrictions on child labor, occupational safety, and gender and racial parity. These were already insufficient, and now the Trump regime wants to do away with them all together.

It is common knowledge that unionization levels overall in the USA are at a low point. Just under 10 percent of workers are unionized currently. This compares to just over 20 percent forty years ago and around 30 percent 70 years ago. These numbers are somewhat misleading, because rates are very uneven. While the unionization rate is only 6 percent in the private sector, 28 percent of government workers belong to a union. Union density in education is more than 30 percent. These numbers help to explain why the Trump regime is targeting public sector workers and teachers and why those sectors are central to the fightback.

Project 2025, the blueprint for Trump’s presidency, claims without evidence that most American workers don’t want to be in a union. According to anecdote, common sense and polls, in fact the majority have always favored unions, and that favorability rate is now at 70 percent. The number of workers who want to be in a union has steadily risen even while union membership has declined. And this is not surprising, because union workers earn more and have better work conditions.

Project 2025 portrays unions as unfairly privileging some workers over others. But there is consistent evidence that unions improve pay and conditions for union and nonunion workers alike by setting sector wide standards. The more workers are unionized, the better things are for all workers.

Some sectors of employment have increased unionization rates even during the period of overall decline. One area is higher education. Graduate student worker unionization grew by 133 percent over the last 12 years, and now around 38 percent of graduate students are represented in overwhelmingly worker-led unions.

It is true that these are exceptions to the rule. Moreover, many unions are themselves weak and not in the habit of fighting. And the current regime is determined to remove bargaining rights altogether.

Nonetheless, workplace organization remains the best hope for strengthening our hand against Trump. While the eruption of mass protests proves that there is widespread will to fight,  so far they have lacked direction or clear next steps. The full potential of the resistance can be realized if harnessed to sustained organization and an orientation on collective worker power. Let’s face it, Trump is not going to listen to ethics and reason and change course, and street demonstrations alone are not enough to force change. Only mass strikes capable of shutting down business as usual would have the power to do this.

Mass strikes, of course, cannot be conjured out of the air, and current levels of organization are far from what would be needed. But there is still much we can do as workers to get us closer to that point and to make a difference along the way.

The rank and file strategy, which centers around worker self-activity, increases the power of organized workers. In his book Class Struggle Unionism, Joe Burns identifies the two kinds of bureaucratic unionism that have been dominant in the US. Business unionism and liberal unionism, while obviously different, both look to non-worker-led labor activism, which produces passivity and stasis, as opposed to worker self-activity which leads to dynamic movement. Whatever the character of the formal leadership in a union, or in a non-union workplace, the goal should be to increase the levels of organization and activity of workers.

As we confront Trump’s wholesale assault on collective bargaining, it is important to remember that labor rights were themselves originally won through non-legal means: mass picketing, sit-down strikes, solidarity strikes, boycotts, workplace occupations. These are the powerful strategies that are not actually permitted under current labor law.

Non-unionized workers can still wield power when organized whether they have formal recognition or not. The so-called “red state revolt” of school teachers in 2018 is one of the best recent examples of workers successfully striking even though they did not have the legal right to collectively bargain. In 2023, workers at Rutgers University won a groundbreaking contract by preparing for and threatening a strike, even without having the legal right to do so.

These and countless other examples show that levels of organization and unity are more important than formal rights.

In the context of today’s generalized attack on workers, the bedrock principles of class struggle unionism are crucial. “ Bargaining for the common good” pledges not only to improve conditions in specific workplaces but also in the surrounding community. Working with other unions in and outside the workplace and bringing unionized and non-unionized workers together  are both necessary  given low rates of unionization. Fighting around political as well as contract issues is essential because social justice is inseparable from bread and butter demands. This is clearer than ever now, as the same forces carrying out genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank are trampling on civil liberties and bargaining rights in the US.

In the face of disconnected and small struggles, we need to build united fronts to work toward shared goals. Disparate unions, organizations, groups and individuals can disagree on all sorts of issues but agree to fight together for common ends. Trump’s attack is far-ranging and all encompassing: on the environment, LGBTQ+ communities, women’s rights, reproductive freedom, racial equity, Palestine. Our response therefore must make common cause, creating democratic and open infrastructures of dissent where we can debate and disagree but unite to fight.

The most important mantra for our moment is that whenever we mobilize, we must also organize. In our unions, we must encourage and enable more workers to get involved, while also supporting the formal leadership when it takes visible, principled stands and nurtures membership initiatives. In non-union workplaces, we should build connections with others to avoid isolation. And we should make sure there is always a “next step,” so that we aren’t repeating the rituals of protest then returning home.

Especially in this new reality, we cannot rely on government funding or corporate sponsorship, so we need membership organizations that are self-sustaining and independent from the capitalist parties. This vision encompasses  trade unions and movement based-organizations, as well as explicitly socialist organizations. Yet in all cases the principled expectation of  democratic methods of organizing and political independence should guide us. The breadth of the attacks on the working class has created both an ideological opening and broad-based radicalization. Our role should include opening  entry points for people to join and—especially given the existential nature of the threats—to have a say in the strategic direction of our collective struggles.

Our role must also include using our socialist politics as a guide to make solidaristic connections between the different struggles and to provide a through-line so that there is continuity when movements rise and fall. Our aim is to build the struggle for a real and lasting alternative, to learn the strategic lessons that have allowed Trump and the far-right internationally to take the political initiative and state power and to wreak such damage.

The Haymarket Martyrs had supported a May 1 strike for the eight-hour work day during which the police had open fired and shot numerous strikers. Prior to their execution, Eleanor Marx visited the political prisoners in Chicago in November 1886. In a now famous speech, given at the inaugural May Day rally in London in 1890, she provided  advice that still should guide us today as we create opportunities for all of the working class, in all our diversity, to join in the momentous fight ahead:

I am speaking this afternoon not only as a Trade Unionist, but as a Socialist. Socialists believe that the eight hours’ day is the first and most immediate step to be taken, and we aim at a time when there will no longer be one class supporting two others, but the unemployed both at the top and at the bottom of society will be got rid of. This is not the end but only the beginning of the struggle; it is not enough to come here to demonstrate in favour of an eight hours’ day. We must not be like some Christians who sin for six days and go to church on the seventh, but we must speak for the cause daily, and make the men, and especially the women that we meet, come into the ranks to help us.