MOSCOW, May 1: From rural mountainous Nepal to the industrial heartland of Germany, workers took to the streets around the world on Monday in largely peaceful May Day demonstrations for labour rights, as immigrants in the United States prepared a jobs boycott.
The crowds of workers swelled to one million across Russia, heeding the rallying call of unions as well as Soviet nostalgics, to protest against low wages and poverty.
“The industry is in ruins, the salaries are miserable, and working for a living does not provide enough to buy an apartment in a Moscow suburb,” said Ivan Klyuchenko, a 17-year-old member of AKM, a group of young communists.
In Germany, trade unionists brought out half a million workers in some 500 demonstrations nationwide in a show of force ahead of labour reform planned by the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
French unions staged more than 100 marches around the country to keep the heat turned on the weakened government to make further concessions after defeating a new labour law.
In Spain, workers targeted the rich to underscore their views.
Several hundred farm labourers briefly occupied the sprawling estate of the Duchess of Alba to protest that 80 per cent of European Union farm subsidies go to the 30 largest landowners in the southern Andalusia region.
The May 1 Labour Day in the United States was set for an orchestrated nationwide immigrant workers’ boycott.
Hispanic groups planned a ‘Day Without Immigrants’, urging people to stay home from work and school and avoid shopping trips to press for legalising the status of some 12 million illegal immigrants living in the world’s richest country.
GOLDEN WEEK: Also on Monday, China kicked off a seven-day ‘golden week’ holiday intended to stimulate consumption in the world’s largest nation.
But many of the country’s 200 million rural migrant workers flocking to the cities from the countryside said they could not afford to take any days off.
“Golden Week can never be golden if our economy and society cannot bestow a little gold on everyone,” an editorial in the Beijing News said.
In Europe, trade unionists in Italy booed down two ministers from the outgoing government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Greek island ferries stayed at anchor and in Bulgaria the ruling Socialist party addressed some 2,000 supporters in Sofia as ‘dear comrades’.—AFP
