Roughly 500 labor organizations across the United States have organized a massive economic blackout calling for “no school, no work, no shopping” to commemorate May Day, also known as International Labor Day.
The event was organized as part of an initiative called Mayday Strong and was inspired by increased immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the economic boycott following the deaths of Americans Renee Good and Alex Preti in January.
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Although the scope of these events is wide, they are an overall effort to protest government policies that favor the super-rich over the working class.
Mayday Strong’s wide-ranging demands, including “taxing the rich” and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), come after Republicans voted Wednesday to pass a budget that would fund the agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
The group also calls for an end to the war and “the expansion of democracy,” the group said in a statement.
While the tent is far-reaching in nature, organizers emphasized that it is a result of broader challenges facing American workers.
“Since the inauguration, corporate billionaires and their Project 2025 agenda have promoted attacks on our rights and freedoms, targeting workers based on the way we look, the words we speak, the jobs we do, and undermining our First Amendment rights and freedom of association,” Brendan Griffiths, president of the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said in a statement to Al Jazeera. Project 2025 was a conservative initiative developed by the Heritage Foundation before the 2025 presidential election that aimed, among other things, to reorganize the U.S. federal government and strengthen executive power.
Mayday Strong said the rally’s overall mission was to “put workers before billionaires,” and announced widespread economic boycotts in several cities, including Los Angeles, Boston, and Atlanta.
Have worker protections changed under the Trump administration?
The push to strengthen worker protections follows a series of actions by President Donald Trump’s administration last year that stripped many protections, including for federal employees.
Earlier this year, the administration reclassified thousands of federal employees as “at-will” employees, making it more difficult for public employees to challenge their firings.
President Trump also cut staff at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), including Gwynne Wilcox, who was appointed to the board by former Democratic President Joe Biden.
In March 2025, the Supreme Court refused to intervene in the dismissal. The NLRB, the federal agency through which workers file complaints against employers to investigate unfair labor practices, is operating at limited capacity due to layoffs.
President Trump also rescinded policies that protect workers from dangerous AI developments that put them at a disadvantage. A Biden administration-era executive order required the Department of Labor to ensure that employers are transparent about how they use AI, to ensure that AI enhances and complements workers’ jobs, and to provide resources to upskill workers for AI-related job changes.
A report released earlier this month by Goldman Sachs found that AI has eliminated an average of 16,000 jobs per month over the past year.
President Trump also rolled back protections meant to prevent workplace discrimination, including weakening enforcement of requirements that employers maintain affirmative action standards and cracking down on private sector diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. Major Target is one such company, cutting back on its DEI program and leading to widespread boycotts in 2025. Companies like Amazon and Goldman Sachs have also scaled back their DEI efforts.
The White House argued that the initiative provides preferential treatment based on race and gender.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), an agency under the Department of Labor, is also lowering safety standards. It included an executive order halting implementation of new safety standards, including proposed heat safety measures for workers, including mandatory breaks and hydration.
In April, the Trump administration proposed a $47 million cut to the agency for fiscal year 2027, which begins in October. The White House can propose a budget, but Congress ultimately makes the budget decisions.
But encroachment on OSHA is nothing new. The AFL-CIO’s Line of Duty Deaths Report (PDF) released earlier this week says the agency’s budget has been cut by 10 percent, the agency’s budget cut to full staffing by 26 percent and the number of inspectors reduced by 16 percent since the organization began issuing reports 35 years ago.
On the wage front, the White House failed to deliver on a key promise to raise the federal minimum wage at the beginning of the Biden administration.
The plan was blocked by Democrats who voted against these wage increases, including then-Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who sided with Republicans opposed to raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Biden was able to increase the federal minimum wage for federal contractors, but Trump repealed it in 2025.
Although each state has a higher minimum wage, the federal minimum wage has not been raised since 2009 and remains at $7.25 an hour. The increase occurred during the first months of the Obama administration, but it was passed by Congress several years earlier, in 2007, when Democrats held majorities in both chambers of Congress.
What events are being held today?
Gatherings vary in size and scope. Educators in North Carolina are demanding more funding for public schools, and more than a dozen school districts across the state have banded together to close.
In New Orleans, nurses, like students at the University of Illinois at Chicago, are demanding better pay and fairer contracts.
In New York, a rally called on e-commerce giant Amazon to terminate its contract with ICE. ICE uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) for cloud storage, and in September ICE purchased cloud services from Amazon for $25 million.
On Friday afternoon, hundreds of workers representing 70 organizations rallied in New York’s Washington Square Park. The crowd was filled with workers demanding a “living wage” and holding placards calling for things like a tax on billionaires.
Guadalupe Sosa, a street vendor who heads a street vendor association, was among the demonstrators on Friday.
“Like my parents, thousands of other immigrants have moved here, and we are the workers who wake up every morning and make this city work. We are the workers who have been ignored for many years,” he told Al Jazeera.
New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani also spoke at the rally, saying, “Without support for workers, I wouldn’t be standing before you as mayor.”
“With more than 3,000 actions planned in more than 40 cities, unions, allies, community organizations, and other advocates are taking up arms with workers across the country to protest policies, actions, and tactics aimed at disenfranchising working families, silencing their voices, trampling their rights, and intimidating them into submission,” Jennifer Abruzzo, former general counsel at the National Labor Relations Board, told Al Jazeera.
“We are demonstrating our strength and acting together for a common cause. There is great power in numbers.”
What is the history of May Day?
The history of May Day, or International Labor Day, dates back to the late 19th century, when American workers began fighting for an eight-hour day. The largest demonstration took place in Chicago.
Tensions boiled over in 1886 when a workers’ meeting turned violent. A bomb was thrown at the police, and in retaliation, police opened fire on protesters in Haymarket Square, in what became known as the Haymarket Incident.
Labor organizations celebrate this day in solidarity with workers pushing for labor reform.
The United States does not recognize May Day as an official holiday, instead observing Labor Day in September as the official day to celebrate the American labor movement.
