{"id":23248,"date":"2026-05-01T21:33:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T21:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/23248\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T21:33:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T21:33:13","slug":"what-to-know-about-may-day-demonstrations-around-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/23248\/","title":{"rendered":"What to know about May Day demonstrations around the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

PARIS (AP) \u2014 Activists worldwide held May Day rallies and street protests<\/a> Friday, calling for peace, higher wages and better working conditions as many workers grapple with rising energy costs<\/a> and shrinking purchasing power<\/a> tied to the Iran war<\/a>.<\/p>\n

May 1 is a public holiday in many countries to mark International Workers\u2019 Day, or Labor Day, when workers\u2019 unions traditionally rally around wages, pensions, inequality and broader political issues. Demonstrations were held from Seoul, Sydney and Jakarta to many European capitals. In the U.S., activists opposing President Donald Trump\u2019s policies<\/a> also held marches and boycotts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking people refuse to pay the price for Donald Trump\u2019s war in the Middle East,\u201d the European Trade Union Confederation, which represents 93 trade union organizations in 41 European countries, said. \u201cToday\u2019s rallies show working people will not stand by and see their jobs and living standards destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n

What to know about May Day: <\/p>\n

Demonstrations across the world<\/p>\n

Rising living costs linked to the conflict in the Middle East was as a key theme in Friday\u2019s rallies.<\/p>\n

On a main avenue in Casablanca, Morocco\u2019s largest city, taxi drivers honked their horns and bus drivers parked their vehicles to protest rising fuel costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll my expenses have gone up, but my wages haven\u2019t budged,\u201d Akherraz Lhachimi of the Moroccan Labor Union said.<\/p>\n

Several rallies were staged in South Africa, where the head of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Zingiswa Losi, said workers were \u201csuffocating\u201d under rising costs of food, electricity, transportation and healthcare.<\/p>\n

Turkish authorities in Istanbul detained hundreds of demonstrators<\/a> for attempting to march in areas declared off-limits on security grounds, most notably central Taksim Square, the epicenter of 2013 protests. May Day rallies in Turkey are frequently marred by clashes with authorities.<\/p>\n

A demonstration in Santiago, Chile, ended with vandalism and clashes between protesters and police, who used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowd. <\/p>\n

Several thousand people gathered across Portugal as unions rallied together to protest proposed changes to labor laws that including making worker dismissals easier and reducing miscarriage bereavement leave. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the only voice we have,\u201d public sector worker Paulo Domingues said of the protests.<\/p>\n

France\u2019s mandatory day off<\/p>\n

May Day carries special meaning this year in France, after a heated debate about whether employees should be allowed to work on the country\u2019s most protected public holiday \u2014 the only day when most employees have a mandatory paid day off. <\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of people joined marches across the country, including in Paris, where brief scuffles with police broke out.<\/p>\n

Almost all businesses, shops and malls are closed, and only essential sectors such as hospitals, transport and hotels are exempt. <\/p>\n

A recent parliamentary proposal to expand work on the day prompted major outcry from unions and left-wing politicians. <\/p>\n

Faced with the dispute, the government this week introduced a bill that would allow bakeries and florists to open. It is customary in France to give lily of the valley flowers on May Day as a symbol of good luck. <\/p>\n

\u201cMay 1 is not just any day,\u201d Small and Medium-sized Businesses Minister Serge Papin said. \u201cIt symbolizes social gains stemming from a century of building social rules that have led to the labor code we know in France.\u201d<\/p>\n

Calls for street protests and boycotts in the US<\/p>\n

In the United States, where May Day is not a federal holiday, May Day Strong, a coalition of activist groups and labor unions, urged people to protest under the banner of \u201cworkers over billionaires\u201d and called for an economic blackout through \u201cno school, no work, no shopping.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police said multiple people were arrested outside the New York Stock Exchange, but they did not have an exact count or information on charges. Video showed one person struggling with officers as protesters wearing shirts printed with \u201cNo work. No school. No trading\u201d printed on the front and \u201cWorkers over billionaires\u201d on the back tried to chain themselves to a railing.<\/p>\n

The commotion appeared to have set off alarms inside the exchange and caused it to briefly lower security doors.<\/p>\n

Across the U.S., many protesters voiced opposition to Trump\u2019s policies, including his immigration crackdown<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing tons and tons of attacks on working people and on oppressed communities from the Trump administration, both at home and abroad,\u201d said Kathryn Stender, an activist with the Party for Socialism and Liberation who was among thousands at a rally in a Chicago park.<\/p>\n

The atmosphere there was festive, with Native American dancers, mariachi bands and monarch butterfly signs, which have become a symbol of the immigrant rights movement.<\/p>\n

While labor and immigrant rights are historically intertwined, the focus of May Day rallies in the U.S. shifted to immigration in 2006. That\u2019s when roughly 1 million people, including nearly half a million in Chicago alone, took to the streets to protest federal legislation that would have made living in the U.S. without legal permission a felony.<\/p>\n

Roots in Chicago<\/p>\n

May Day, or International Workers\u2019 Day, traces back more than a century to a pivotal period in U.S. labor history.<\/p>\n

In the 1880s, unions pushed for an eight-hour workday. A Chicago rally in May 1886 turned deadly when a bomb exploded and police responded with gunfire. Several labor activists \u2014 most of them immigrants \u2014 were convicted of conspiracy and other charges; four were executed.<\/p>\n

Unions later designated May 1 to honor workers. A monument in Chicago\u2019s Haymarket Square commemorates them with the inscription: \u201cDedicated to all workers of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press journalists from around the world contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS (AP) \u2014 Activists worldwide held May Day rallies and street protests Friday, calling for peace, higher wages…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2477,2040,112,7397,38,533,50,8,919,918,19,96,2203,14188,2239,3161,1256,2097,9,3726,14190,164,14189,7,54,106],"class_list":{"0":"post-23248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-2024-2026-mideast-wars","9":"tag-activism","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-compensation-and-benefits","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-il-state-wire","17":"tag-illinois","18":"tag-iran","19":"tag-iran-war","20":"tag-jobs-and-careers","21":"tag-kathryn-stender","22":"tag-labor","23":"tag-labor-unions","24":"tag-new-york","25":"tag-new-york-city","26":"tag-news","27":"tag-paris","28":"tag-paulo-domingues","29":"tag-protests-and-demonstrations","30":"tag-serge-papin","31":"tag-top-stories","32":"tag-u-s-news","33":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116501466487688378","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}