Immigrants, labor unite on May Day

May Day marchers in New York City stream into Foley Square. WW photo: G. Dunkel

The workers’ movement in the United States took a significant step forward this May Day when labor and immigrant organizations in New York City came together after a march and closed the day by exchanging speakers under the banner “May Day Is Workers’ Day.”

Last year two separate May Day rallies took place in New York. This year there was such a groundswell of sentiment from rank-and-file union members for unity that May Day organizers held several meetings to work out some kind of joint message. Not only was there an exchange of speakers at each other’s rallies, but the May 1st Coalition, which gathered at Union Square, decided to march to Foley Square in an attempt to unite workers at both actions.

Thousands of workers, many from the various immigrant communities in New York as well as from unions, and contingents from neighborhood, anti-war, women’s, lesbian-gay-bi-trans-queer and other organizations marched for 20 blocks on this sunny spring Sunday from busy Union Square along Broadway to Foley Square downtown.

May Day is celebrated all over the world as a workers’ holiday, with strong roots in the socialist movement. Despite originating in the United States, until 2005 — when the Million Worker March Movement intentionally revived it — May Day’s role as a workers’ holiday had been usurped by Labor Day.

May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights co-coordinator Teresa Gutierrez made it clear from the start that the group would give high priority to building unity between immigrant workers — of whom 1 million have been deported since President Barack Obama took office — and unionized workers. The coalition cut its rally short at Union Square so that it could step off shortly after 1 p.m. to reach the union rally.

This was the sixth straight year that the May 1st Coalition organized a Union Square action. It began with the 2006 outpouring of immigrant workers that subsequently overturned the Sensenbrenner bill and stopped this anti-immigrant legislation from becoming law. As has been its tradition, the march had strong representation not only from many Latin American communities but from virtually all nations around the world whose people come to New York to work and live.

Countrywide solidarity

May 1st organizers gave a national character to the action by inviting two African-American labor leaders whose union struggles are showing the direction in which the labor movement must move to counter the relentless attack by the bosses and bankers.

Gilbert Johnson, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 82 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, brought the mood of the Wisconsin workers’ struggle to the rally. Since Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker used alleged budget shortfalls as a pretext to break all the public sector unions, a mass response has reverberated throughout the state, leading to almost daily political and union action. “If the state and the politicians are broke,” said Johnson, “then we workers have to fix it.”

Clarence Thomas, a leader of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10, told how on April 4 the workers in his local voluntarily shut down the ports of Oakland, Calif., and San Francisco for 24 hours in solidarity with the workers in Wisconsin. Thomas pointed out that while “marches and rallies and vigils are good, the bosses can ignore them, but if we workers withhold our labor, that’s the real power.”

Despite the attacks on immigrants that have seen a million people deported since 2008, the march was militant and upbeat. It included a marching band and a few groups that chanted continuously, sometimes to the beat of drums.

Day laborers, street vendors, domestic workers and unionists marched behind banners reflecting their organizations. The crowd included at least a hundred members of Vamos Unidos, a Latino vendors’ association, plus groups like Domestic Workers United, Jornaleros Unidos de Woodside, the Filipino group BAYAN, Dominican Women Development Center, Desis Rising Up and Moving, 1199SEIU Healthcare Workers East, the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence, Teamsters Local 808, Workers World Party, Las Buenas Amigas and the Independent Workers Movement.

Reaching Foley Square, the demonstrators marched into a rally of thousands of union workers who were chanting, “The workers united will never be defeated.” The Foley Square group included trade unionists from the Laborers’ union, Teamsters Local 210, Service Employees 32B-J, Food and Commercial Workers, Professional Staff Congress at City University of New York, Transport Workers Union Local 100, and many members of AFSCME District Council 37.

Assessing the action

“Immigrant workers once again defied threats of deportation in order to demand legalization, an end to raids and the right to organize,” said Gutierrez. “Today thousands of immigrant workers and union workers observed International Workers’ Day in the U.S. by rallying side by side against cutbacks and for jobs. In New York, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Buffalo and other cities large and small, the two movements joined forces to confront increased attacks on the working class. By uniting, these two forces have strengthened the overall movement against cutbacks, layoffs and foreclosures — as well as given each other more solidarity.

“Now immigrant communities have more allies in their fight against the Department of Homeland Security’s racist ‘Secure Communities’ program,” continued Gutierrez. “And unions have more allies in the fight to preserve collective bargaining.

“In 2006 the immigrant workers’ movement revived May Day around the country,” said Gutierrez. “Now it is being embraced by the wider working class.”

Speakers at the Union Square rally included Roberto Meneses, Day Laborers United; Chris Silvera, Teamsters Local 808; Julia Camagong from National Alliance for Filipino Concerns; Rhadames Rivera, 1199 SEIU Healthcare Workers East; Victor Toro, La Peña del Bronx; Larry Hales of New Yorkers Against the Budget Cuts; Joe Lombardo of the United National Antiwar Committee; and Charles Jenkins from Transport Workers Union Local 100. Silvera and Camagong also addressed the Foley Square rally.

Other speakers included Michelle Keller-Ng, vice president of DC37; Lucy Pagoada from Honduras USA Resistencia; Marina Diaz of Centro Tecuman; Hanalei Ramos, BAYAN USA; Jocelyn Campbell, Domestic Workers United; and Wilfredo Larancuent, co-chair of Labor Rights, Immigrant Rights, Jobs for All and business manager of the Laundry Workers Joint Board, Workers United.