The eight hour day movement and the origins of Mayday

Mayday 1886, source

Richard Mellor

Let's hope today, May 1st 2026 will see one of the largest Mayday's since 1886 and that as opposed to passive protests and rallies, millions of workers take strike action. Mayday is about shutting down production. hitting them where it hurts most----profits. 

 

Mayday is International Workers' Day. When I first came to the United States from Britain in the early seventies, most American workers I spoke to thought May Day was a Soviet or Russian holiday. But Mayday is as American as apple pie as they say. It is a workers' holiday officially celebrated throughout the world but not here. 

Mayday has its roots in the history of the American working class movement. During the later half of the 19th century there was an ongoing struggle for the eight hour day and fewer work hours in general. Craft Unions, where workers organized around their individual trades, was the dominant form of organization and the brutality of the employers was widespread. 

At a meeting of the Central Labor Union of New York City on May 18th 1882, P.J. McGuire, a socialist and founder and General Secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, introduced a resolution for a day of festivities and parades in New York commemorating Labor and it proposed the first Monday in September. The first national organization that supported a day of celebration in honor of Labor was the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions at its convention in Chicago in 1884 and it was these developments that led to Labor Day.

“To capitalists, bankers and their hirelings” the Federation announced. As workers, “..drudge and toil your away your lives for a bare existence, these idlers and non-producers live in luxury and debauchery, squandering with a lavish hand that which belongs to you ---that which your labor produces..” (Sound familiar?)

“They have tried to deny us the right to organize---a right guaranteed by the constitution of this government. Therefore we call on you to show that we defy them; that you will organize; that you have organized; that the day of your deliverance is approaching. To do this we ask you to join the our ranks in celebrating the day.”

The Federation went on to proclaim: “The Trades and Labor Assembly proclaims labor’s annual holiday the first Monday of September. Leave your benches, leave your shops….”

The first national observance took place in September 1885 and the US Congress adopted Labor Day, the first Monday in September, as an official holiday on June 28th 1894. The bill was introduced by a member of the Typographical Union.

Alongside these developments, every Labor demonstration at the time, including the Labor Day celebrations, had the eight hour day as a dominant theme, “Eight Hours to Constitute a Days Work” was a prominent slogan and at the same Federation’s 1884 convention where a national Labor Day was proclaimed, another resolution was passed that stated:

“Resolved by the Federation of Organized Trades Labor Unions of the United States and Canada that eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labor from and after May 1st 1886, and that we recommend to labor organizations throughout this district that they so direct their laws as to conform to this resolution by the time named.”

So May Day has began and always been associated with the struggle for the eight-hour day and the movement around this struggle that arose in the 1880’s and culminating in May 1st 1886.

Prior to the Federation’s resolution, struggles had been taking place around the eight-hour day and shorter working hours in general. Some bosses had conceded and some city councils gave public sector workers the eight-hour day. But like today when we sign a contract, the minute the ink is dry the bosses are trying to violate it. In addition, the bosses would often reduce pay by 20% to compensate for the lost time so they actually lost nothing at all.

It became clear then, as it is today that workers cannot rely on legislation, capitalist politicians or their parties to defend our economic and material interests. All the social legislation that came out of the great upsurge of the 1930’s the occupations and the CIO and the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s from sick leave to title 7 were already rights taken in the streets through mass action; they were simply forced to legitimize them on paper and then write history to show that legislation and “responsible” political lobbying is what produces results.

If they wanted the eight-hour day, “The way to get it” Carpenter’s leader P.J. McGuire said, was “….by organization. In 1868, the United States passed an Eight-Hour Law, and that law has been enforced just twice. If you want and Eight-Hour law, make it yourself.” McGuire added, “We want an enactment by the working men themselves that on a given day, eight hours should constitute a day’s work, and they ought to enforce it themselves.” **

So it was the Carpenter’s that introduced the resolution stating May 1st 1986 as the first day for the establishment of eight hours as the legal workday. Another proposal stated that votes be taken in all Labor organizations for a “universal strike” for an eight-hour workday on May 1st. A writer for the well known Labor journal John Swinton’s paper who was covering the convention, wrote:

“It is useless to wait for legislation……A united demand for a shorter working day, backed by thorough organization, would prove vastly more effective than the enactment of a thousand laws depending for enforcement upon the pleasure of aspiring politicians or sycophantic department officials.” ***

“To accede the point that capitalists have the right to eight hours of our labor is more than a compromise, it is a virtual concession that the wages system is right” the anarchist journal wrote.

But the working class took up the idea seriously and revolutionaries of all types, including anarchists joined the movement and played a crucial role in the success of May day, especially in Chicago which was a hotbed of radical activity. Agitation for the eight-hour day was everywhere and rallies and protests, parades and gatherings took place throughout the country prior to Mayday. By mid April, 250,000 industrial workers were involved and in the face of the movement and to head it off, many bosses made concessions on hours.

They responded with the stick and the carrot as they always do and always will. In the mass media that they owned then as now, their propaganda said that society would collapse, the country would go broke, the money not there. The eight-hour day was “communism, lurid and rampant” . they claimed it would encourage “loafing and gambling, rioting, debauchery and drunkenness.” (they think we are like them you see) They wrote that it would bring “lower wages, poverty and degradation for American workers.”

But there was no stopping the movement. Foner points out that workers were smoking eight-hour tobacco, buying eight-hour shoes and sang the following eight-hour song:

We mean to make things over;
we’re tired of toil for nought

We sure don't have this today

But bare enough to live on; never
an hour for thought.
We want to feel the sunshine; we
Want to smell the flowers;
We’re sure that God has willed it,
And we mean to have eight hours.
We’re summoning our forces from
Shipyard shop and mill:
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will.

On May Day 1886 some 350,000 workers in more than 11,000 workplaces went on strike for the eight-hour day. 40,000 went out in Chicago. These are impressive figures for the time and the conditions and the limited Union organization. 45,000 workers were granted the eight-hour day without striking. The city of Chicago was paralyzed and the meatpacking workers, some of the most abused in the city won the eight-hour day with no reduction in pay, a huge victory. May Day 1886 was also a great organizing tool and thousands of workers joined Labor organizations. The same happened during the great strike upsurge that led to the CIO as millions joined Unions.

The bosses won much of this back but there were permanent gains made as hours were lessened in many industries. But May Day terrified the bosses and they responded with extreme violence attacking gatherings continuously. Then on May 3rd at the McCormick Harvester factory where workers, members of the Knights of Labor were locked out for striking for the eight-hour day, scabs, escorted by hundreds of cops were brought in. As the workers demonstrated against the strikebreaking, the cops shot in to the crowd and killed four strikers. The following day, a meeting was called in Haymarket Square to protest the brutal killings and indiscriminate violence by the police. It was a peaceful rally until the end of the day when it was almost over. A couple of hundred cops waded in to the crowd to force them to disperse despite it being a legal gathering and attended by the mayor who had left earlier.

A bomb was thrown at the cops killing a bunch of them and the cops responded by shooting in to the crowd killing a number of workers and wounding hundreds. In the aftermath of the bombing, hundreds of workers were arrested, tortured and beaten. The cops eventually chose the prominent anarchist workers’ leaders to put on trial. These were among the most successful organizers and were hated by the employers and the cops. They were accused of murder even thought they weren’t at the rally because the “unknown” bomb thrower must have been influenced by their speeches.

Haymarket Martyrs

The accused were found guilty in a rigged trial and sentenced to hang. Protests and support poured in from around the world which did force them to commute some sentences but four of the workers’ leaders, including Albert Parsons, were executed.

Throughout the struggle for Labor rights, and the eight-hour day culminating in May Day, the tendency is for workers to overcome the barriers that the bosses use to divide and weaken us. “Every worker who toiled for a living would be welcome. No distinction of color will be made; race prejudice will be ignored; religious differences will be set aside; but all men will be on an equality provided he earns his daily bread” proclaimed the New York Central Labor Union in its appeal to all Labor bodies to support Labor day. It is a reflection of the times that the mention of women is not as prominent which reflects the terrible legacy of sexism but we learn through struggle.

The reason May Day is ignored by the officials, legislators of laws, and the Democratic and Republican parties, is that it was an independent movement of the working class in this country. As McGuire said, we have to take independent action if we want something. The same applies today. The leaders of the organized working class today are also terrified of independent working class action, either direct action like strikes or political action like a mass workers party as they support capitalism, they have the same world view as the boss. Labor Day is a legislated day that they were forced to approve and they even hide that history but it is the "official" and safe holiday where we eat and drink and support the Democrats.

May Day is a uniquely American creation. May Day began as our day but we share it with the rest of the workers of the world because we are not simply “one” with other workers here in the US,  we are “one” with workers of all countries. The history of US Labor is a rich and militant one. We have faced incredible violence and survived it. Despite the history of racism and sexism that the bosses introduce in to every institution and pore of society in order to divide us, we have come this far.

Back in May 2006, some of the most oppressed and abused sections of the US working class, a couple of million immigrant workers reminded us of the importance of this holiday to our class. We thank them for it. 

Happy Mayday.

* St Paul Globe Democrat, 8-16-1855 Quoted in P Foner, History of the Labor movement of the United States Vol.2 p97
** ibid p 99
*** ibid P99

Labor History: The Real History of the New Deal: Reform From Below

Just listen to the commentary and the bias in reporting.

A friend shared a Robert Reich article with me criticizing the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who spoke at a public event recently blaming the “progressive era” and I assume progressives. For the “worst crimes of the 20^th century” Reich is correct to take Thomas up on this but then goes on to praise Theodore Roosevelt and his grandson Franklin D Roosevelt as the forces behind the progressive era. I respond to this false argument below, it is propaganda really in order to negate the role of the US working class in changing history.

 

The Real History of the New Deal: Reform From Below

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444 retired

Robert Reich, one of the architects of NAFTA, invokes the New Deal while leaving out its most important dimensions — the explosive class struggle that actually forced Roosevelt's hand. Liberal labor leaders and Democrats love to cast Roosevelt as the friend of the working man, the hero who saved capitalism from itself. The real story is more uncomfortable for them.

The legislation of the 1930s — the National Recovery Act of 1933, the Wagner Act of 1935, the WPA and the broader social legislation of the era — was the capitalist class codifying what workers had already won in the streets and workplaces of America. Roosevelt didn't lead the working class. He managed the crisis it created.

The Ground Shifts

After the 1929 crash, industrial production collapsed by 48% between 1929 and 1933. The early strikes of the period were led by the American Federation of Labor, but the AFL was a craft union federation with little interest in industrial workers, who were considered unskilled and unorganizable. John Lewis's United Mine Workers stood as the major exception. Those early strikes were defeated.

The Depression ground people down, and radicalism filled the vacuum. The Communist Party organized in auto and steel, led rent strikes in working class neighborhoods, and recruited thousands. It was building a base in the most strategic sectors of the economy.

Then came 1934 — a turning point in American labor history that deserves to be remembered the way July 4th is remembered, and isn't.

Three general strikes erupted that year. In Minneapolis, 40,000 workers took to the streets in a truckers' strike led by organizers who would go on to found the Socialist Workers Party. They battled police in pitched confrontations and won. In Toledo, workers struck the Auto-Lite plant — and critically, the unemployed joined them on the picket line, refusing to be used as scabs against their employed neighbors. The left-wing Lucas County Unemployed League was central to that solidarity. In San Francisco, longshoreman Harry Bridges led a general strike that shut the city down. Socialists and Communists played leading roles in all three. All three won.

Legislation Follows Power

It was in the aftermath of this upheaval that Roosevelt passed the Wagner Act in 1935, guaranteeing private sector workers the legal right to organize. This sequence matters. The law didn't create the movement — the movement created the conditions under which the law became necessary.

The AFL, shaken by events, made a belated attempt to organize auto workers. But its craft union structure was incompatible with industrial unionism. The break came dramatically when John Lewis — heading what was then the Committee for Industrial Organization within the AFL — punched the Carpenters union president and walked out. The CIO was born. Lewis, a shrewd tactician whatever his politics, used Communist Party activists as his organizers. At the CIO's height, roughly 43% of its affiliated unions were led by CP supporters. Critically, the CIO had no color bar. Black workers joined in enormous numbers, and the impact on Black working class life was substantial and lasting.

Flint

In 1936, workers took on the world's largest corporation. General Motors had vowed it would never recognize a union. It paid workers in company scrip. Workers lived in GM-owned houses and bought from GM-owned stores. It was a company that owned people's lives.

On December 30, 1936, workers occupied the Fisher Body plant in Flint, Michigan. Sit-down strikes spread across GM facilities throughout the country, echoing the great French sit-downs of that same year. The occupation lasted 44 days. Women organized a network outside the plant walls, passing food through windows and holding the line against police. The GM bosses were reluctant to storm the plants — the workers were sitting beside the dies and tooling, and could destroy them. The Michigan governor threatened to send in troops. The workers' response was unambiguous: if soldiers came in, the blood was on his hands and they were prepared to die.

GM capitulated. The UAW was recognized. It remains one of the greatest victories in the history of American labor.

The War and What Came After

The economic crisis deepened again in 1937. What ultimately rescued the capitalist system was not the New Deal but the Second World War — at the cost of 57 million lives.

Roosevelt was an astute ruling class politician. He forced GM to retool its factories for war production — a private corporation compelled by the state to produce what the state required. During the 2008 financial crisis, the same logic applied when the government effectively nationalized large sections of the financial industry, calling it "conservatorship" to avoid the political freight of the word. The lesson in both cases is the same: through public ownership and democratic control over production, societies can produce what people need rather than what generates profit. That is the fundamental contradiction the New Deal exposed without resolving.

The Lesson

Twenty years after Flint, the gains of the civil rights movement followed the same logic. Legislation came from pressure in the streets, in the churches, on the buses and at the lunch counters — not from the goodwill of politicians. Politicians responded, sometimes reluctantly, to power they could not ignore.

That is the consistent lesson of this period. Legislative gains that benefit working people come from organized power from below. They are then managed, institutionalized, and where possible, defused by those above. Understanding that sequence clearly is the beginning of not being fooled by the next Robert Reich who invokes the New Deal while burying its actual history.

For Further Reading

• Sit-Down — Sidney Fine
• Labor's Giant Step — Art Preis
• Strike! — Jeremy Brecher
• Poor People's Movements — Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward

Michael Roberts: US economy: jobs and AI

US economy: jobs and AI

by Michael Roberts

The US economy expanded only at an annualised 1.4% in Q4 2025, well below forecasts of 3%, the advance estimate of real GDP showed. And over the whole 2025, the US economy expanded 2.2%, or below the 2.4% rate in 2024. The boasting of Trump and his advisers of a US boom doesn’t look quite so convincing after these data. Investment in equipment and software products rose more than 8% in 2025, probably the result of the AI investment boom. Without that, US real GDP growth would have been well under 2% during last year.

US economic growth in 2025 was certainly faster than the other top  G7 economies, which are still stagnating with growth rates barely above 1% a year.  But an annual growth rate of 2.2% in 2025 is still less half that of China’s and one-third of India’s – although the latter are ‘emerging economies’, not ‘mature’ capitalist economies.

The official consumer price inflation year-on-year rate has been falling during 2025, but several studies have shown that the official measure of consumer price inflation in the US is biased downwards. One study pointed out that mortgage and financing rates are left out of the costs for consumers in the official index. Including such costs would double the inflation rate.  In a previous post, I have shown studies that reveal how the official index does not account for the real rise in prices for American households.  If it did, using a ‘value rate of inflation’, (that Mino Carchedi and I have developed), it would show that real household incomes have fallen some 20% since 1960 and 4% since the end of the pandemic.

The Trump administration claims that the tariff hikes on imports into the US since last April (now judged illegal by the US supreme court) have had no effect on inflation.  But the latest analysis suggests that this is not so. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that US companies and consumers are now bearing 95% of the increased tariffs, particularly on imported foodstuffs.  The tariffs on food imports have risen 44%, in effect, a 12% tax on consumers.  This analysis was backed up by the New York Federal Reserve, which concluded that “US import prices for goods subject to the average tariff increased by 11 percent … more than those for goods not subject to tariffs” and “U.S. firms and consumers continue to bear the bulk of the economic burden of the high tariffs imposed in 2025.”  Higher tariffs, labour and health-insurance costs had pushed many businesses to raise prices. “After holding the line on prices for several months, companies—big and small—have begun a new round of increases, in some cases by high-single-digits.”

On reading this, White House adviser Kevin Hassett was so irate, that he called this “the worst paper I’ve ever seen in the history of the Federal Reserve System,” and said that “the people associated with this papershould presumably be disciplined.”

Headline consumer price inflation on a three-month basis is still 3%. The latest GDP data for Q4 measures what is called the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) index for inflation.  This is the measure that the Federal Reserve follows to adjust its policy interest rate.  And the core PCE (excluding food and energy) is also above 3% on a 3-month basis (Furman source).

In 2025, retail prices rose faster than average consumer incomes. So stagflation is still in place.

That meant that in 2025 Americans only sustained their consumption needs by running down savings and increasing debt. The personal savings rate fell to 3.6% of income in December, down 1.9pp since April 2025.

No wonder most American households, apart from the very rich, feel depressed about their lot. It’s what is called a K-shaped economy.

But what about jobs? Does the current relatively low unemployment rate lend the lie to stagnation? The official rate may creeping up, but it is still way below where it was at the end of the pandemic slump. 

January’s jobs growth figure looked good on the surface, up 130k. But rises in November and December were revised down.  More important, there were even larger revisions to 2025 as a whole, which showed that last year was the weakest year of job creation outside of recessions in two decades. The US economy only added 181,000 jobs in 2025, or just 15,000 extra jobs per month.

Outside of leisure & hospitality, private healthcare, and government – the US economy has been consistently losing jobs.

Manufacturing employment notably fell. So Trump’s economy is not exactly delivering the “manly jobs” that he promised.

Ironically, the health sector desperately needs staff, but Trump’s draconian deportation policy has removed the very immigrant staff that the sector relies on. Immigrant labour has not taken jobs from native-born workers, but instead filled the gaps where native-born labour was unavailable. Foreign-born workers are heavily concentrated in low-paid occupations, like health and social care.  

So far, the unemployment rate has not risen too much. But 2026 is likely to change that. Job cut announcements have hit their highest levels since 2009, while vacancies have fallen to 2020 lows. Last month, US employers announced over 108,000 job cuts, the highest start-of-year total since the 2009 Great Recession, with layoffs rising 118% year over year and over 200% from the end of 2025. Many of those cuts were in white-collar professions. Amazon has implemented multiple rounds of cuts, eliminating around 16,000 corporate jobs in January as part of a broader goal to trim some 30,000 white-collar roles. Meta continued layoffs in its Reality Labs division and other teams, with hundreds of positions already cut in early 2026. So the vacancy-to-unemployed ratio is now near 1.0. This is a critical point that will indicate rising unemployment from hereon.

And this brings us to the impact of AI on the economy and jobs.  The debate on the impact of AI continues.  First, there are the optimists. Stanford University economist, Eric Brynjolfsson predicts that AI will follow a ‘J-curve’ in which initially there is a slow, even negative, effect on productivity as companies invest heavily in the technology, before they finally reap the rewards. And then the boom comes. Such a J-curve was seen in US manufacturing productivity growth, which fell in the mid-1980s and then after the recession of 1991, accelerated sharply until the mid-2000s. 

Brynjolfsson now reckons that US productivity rose 2.7% last year, a near doubling from the sluggish 1.4 per cent annual average that characterised the past decade.  BJ raised his ‘J-curve’ theory again. “General-purpose technologies, from the steam engine to the computer, do not deliver immediate gains. Instead, they require a period of massive, often unmeasured investment in intangible capital — reorganising business processes, retraining the workforce and developing new business models. During this phase, measured productivity is suppressed as resources are diverted to investments. The updated 2025 US data suggests we are now transitioning out of this investment phase into a harvest phase where those earlier efforts begin to manifest as measurable output.”

But the latest Q4 2025 data throw that prediction into doubt. Another mainstream economist Jason Furman forecasts just a 1.7% rise in productivity for 2025, which would be better than the historic annual average of 1.4%, but a full point below Brynjolfsson.  And remember, changes in the productivity of labour depend on two factors: output growth and employment growth.  With employment growth near zero in 2025 and 2025 output growth now measured at 2.2%, the maximum rise in productivity will be no more than 2%, and will mainly be due to jobs disappearing, not output rising.

Moreover, is even this current productivity rise in 2025 due to AI? A recent study of how AI adoption affects productivity and employment across more than 12,000 European firms found that AI adoption “increases labour productivity levels by 4% on average in the EU, with no evidence of reduced employment in the short run”. But the productivity benefits, however, were unevenly distributed, benefiting mainly medium and large firms that possess the resources, technical expertise, and economies of scale needed to absorb integration costs.  “Moreover, the Ai impact tapered to a one-off effect – rather boosting than long-run productivity growth.”

Another study of 6000 CFOs, CEOs and executives across the US, UK, Germany and Australia found that while 70% of firms actively use AI and two-thirds of top executives regularly use AI, their average use is only 1.5 hours a week, with one-quarter reporting no AI use. And these firms report “little impact of AI over the last 3 years, with over 80% of firms reporting no impact on either employment or productivity”.  The executives reckoned that by the end of this decade, AI will boost productivity by 1.4%, increase output by 0.8% and cut employment by 0.7%.  This is not anywhere near as large an impact as the optimists expect, and moreover suggests that job losses are just as contributory as any output rises.

According to a new report by the OECD, AI use by companies is rising across OECD countries. In 2025, 20.2% of firms reported using this tool, more than double in comparison to 2023. However, adoption is not the same as productivity.  The study shows that AI is like any other technology introduced by capital – it will only be adopted widely if it enables capitalists to shed labour and raise profitability. As Karl Marx observed in Capital, machinery and automation are deployed not to lighten work but to deepen capital’s grip on labour. “The constant aim of these improvements is to diminish the manual labour for a given capital, which, thanks to these improvements, not only requires fewer laborers, but also constantly substitutes the less skilled for the more skilled”.  So when the optimists claim a boost in productivity from AI, they are ignoring the impact on jobs and labour’s share of new value created.

Indeed, PIMCO, the giant bond investment managers, reckon if there is any increase in productivity from AI, it is likely to come from shedding jobs rather than from increasing output.  In the technology boom of the 1990s, PIMCO says, output rose and workers (at least in the expanding tech sectors) saw real wages rise. 

But this time is different. Workers’ real wage growth in 2025 slowed to a pace barely above 1%. This helped drive down labour’s share of U.S. income to its lowest level in decades of reported history.

Any productivity gains from AI will come from job losses and any new value will swing to the owners of AI capital, not workers. Indeed, PIMCO reckons that “AI-related job displacement is already happening, although so far it’s been relatively limited. Entry-level hiring stalled in 2025 in the most AI-exposed sectors. And since 2022, we estimate that cumulative U.S. employment in the most AI-exposed sectors has already declined by over 1% versus a 4% increase in employment across other sectors.”

And more and more studies praising AI do so from the point of view of reducing human labour time.  We are told that AI-powered “agents” are cutting the time taken to produce research and forecasting reports. Goldman Sachs recently announced it was working with Anthropicon, an AI agent, to automate roles at the bank. The company says Uber, Netflix, Salesforce and Allianz also use its models in a similar way.  PIMCO estimates that approximately one-third of tasks performed by workers across the U.S. economy could be handled by the current LLMs. “If AI hypothetically were to displace only a small 2% share of these workers, it could lead to nearly one million fewer U.S. jobs and the unemployment rate rising by 0.5 percentage points (assuming none of these workers leave the labour force).”

Meanwhile, in 2025, technology investment reached levels unseen in decades. The big 7 tech companies—Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple and Broadcom (8 if one counts Tesla)—have announced $700 billion new spending in AI for 2026 alone, after having invested $450 billion in 2025. Google said it plans to double its capital expenditure this year to as much as $185bn. However, cash flow from existing businesses is increasingly insufficient to meet investment demands from the ‘hyperscalers’ in an industry that requires constant reinvestment, and whose returns may not justify the scale of expenditure.  The likelihood of a financial bust remains high.  And the jury is still out on the productivity impact of AI.

The US AI tech giants are increasingly banking on achieving super-intelligent models that would transform capitalism – they are searching for this ‘holy grail’ (which remember, was a fiction). The aim is the removal of human labour altogether. Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei said that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in one to five years. Just this month, Microsoft’s AI chief Mustafa Suleyman predicted most white-collar work “will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.”   The US economy is still “one big bet on AI”.  

Jeffrey Pretti Murder Forces Union Heads to Say Something

Source NY Times

Richard Mellor

AFSCME Local 444, retired

The murder of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an AFGE Local 366g member in Minneapolis, by Trump’s neo-fascist militia (ICE) has forced some important figures atop organized labor to speak out. 

 

Pretti was shot some 10 times while helping another person who was shoved to the ground by an ICE Agent. Pretti was in possession of a firearm but never took it from its holster or threatened the ICE officer with it. It should be pointed out, especially for readers abroad, that Minnesota is an open carry state which means Petti had a legal, constitutional, right to carry a firearm.

 

Petti was shot after he was disarmed and as he was pinned to the ground by numerous ICE Agents. He was shot in the back.

 

I don’t need to go in to detail here but we have seen the video’s and this is in my mind murder and it’s not the first murder by these masked thugs.

 

Petti’s murder comes after the murder of Renee Good who was shot three times by an ICE Agent as she was in her car. The third shot that was to the head is the one that killed her.

 

The heroic defense of our democratic rights, of immigrant rights and of the US constitutional right to protest by the people of Minneapolis has been lauded throughout the world not just in the US. If there is anything that makes Americans feel proud to be American it is the people of Minneapolis and Minnesota. What they have faced and are clearly winning is a war against a neo-fascist regime in Washington that is intent on driving the US working class back to an era before the rise of the CIO in the 1930’s. 

 

Lives have been lost in this battle that is being fought for all of us.

 

The people of Minneapolis put the Trump Administration on the defensive and Trump has removed the Head of Border Patrol Greg Bovino apparently not pleased with his handling of the Pretti murder. Trump is also sending border czar Tom Homan who also held the position under Obama who himself  was referred to as the “Deporter in Chief”. There are also calls for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to be impeached.

 

As far as the statements from AFL-CIO head Liz Schuler and National Union of Building Trades head  Sean McGarvey goes, we have to take them with a grain of salt and see them within the context of the massive resistance to the Trump Administrations action by the people of Minneapolis. I have included both statements.  McGarvey refers to Nancy Pelosi as a “working-class warrior” and is very closely allied with management in the Team Concept that is such a disaster for working people and all union members which gives us a little insight in to his world view.

 

The state violence, but more importantly, the resistance on the ground in Minneapolis has not only backed off the state somewhat, it has forced these conservative trade union leaders to say something. But for those of us that have spent years active in the trade union movement we are used to weak statements like these from the labor hierarchy. They are crafted in a way they cannot be opposed but will amount to nothing.

 

NABTU Statement

The statement from Sean McGarvey the president of NABTU is very similar to Liz Schuler’s statement as head of the AFL-CIO in that they “mourn the senseless killing” of another Minneapolis resident. “America’s unions join the call for ICE to immediately leave Minnesota before anyone else is hurt or killed. We demand local authorities conduct a full, transparent investigation that will lead to accountability for this tragic and violent act, and for Congress to use its power to hold ICE accountable.”

 

Supporting the demand for independent investigation and accountability from congress is safe and of course we would support it, but it is not enough.

 

Young workers in particular should consider that there are 14 million members in organized labor. The North American Building Trades Unions have three million workers affiliated to it most of them members of the AFL-CIO. These workers alone have the economic power to shut down the US economy.

AFL-CIO Statement

 

It is without doubt true that from the George Floyd murder to the present resistance to ICE the folks on the ground in Minneapolis have learned a great deal and honed their skills in dealing with this type of state repression. They have developed methods of communication, of how and when to appear and how to warn each area of impending danger and so on. I am not there so can only speculate but as a person who has been involved in some serious strikes and community battles, we learn a lot in these struggles. 

 

The need to spread the protests and activity to other cities and other areas of the country is crucial. My guess is they already have them in Minneapolis or they are in formation as the days go on, but community defense committees have to be expanded. As a friend pointed out to me today, many of those activists on the ground in Minneapolis are union members, it is crucial we take this struggle in to our unions and build these defense organizations, community and organized labor together. 

Those of that have been around a while are well aware that the labor hierarchy will not use the resources at their disposal to take this path and help spread the resistance to the present administration's violence beyond the harmless statements included here.They will, as they usually do, temper an independent movement of the working class and direct it in to the Democratic Party. 

 

Regardless of the immediate outcome the Trump Administration has been given a bloody nose and the people of Minneapolis have brought to the fore some of the great radical traditions of the US working class.