NEW YORK — Thousands of workers and immigrant laborers took to the streets Sunday to celebrate May Day, demanding rights for those “who toil in the sun” while others pocket the profits.
The message in Manhattan, delivered with bullhorns and drums, was echoed by millions of workers around the world, from Havana to Berlin to Istanbul.
The burning issues were the same: more jobs, better working conditions, higher wages and decent health care.
May 1 is a traditional date for pro-labor demonstrations. Immigration advocates in the United States latched on to the celebrations in 2006.
At dozens of rallies across the country, they vowed to fight on behalf of undocumented immigrants who are being rounded up and deported.
“STOP the deportations!” read a placard in Manhattan’s Union Square, where about 1,000 people gathered at noon before marching down Broadway for a rally near the office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Across U.S. farmlands, “they toil in the sun, they toil so hard — and yet, others are making the most money,” said Jocelyn Gill-Campbell, an organizer for Domestic Workers United.
Immigrant advocates were joined at the Manhattan rallies by members of U.S. labor unions whose voices were heard loudest in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states where in recent months they protested efforts to curtail the right to collective bargaining.
Underlying the gatherings Sunday was seething anger over the rising cost of living and growing disparities between rich and poor — exacerbated by the global economic squeeze.
In Turkey, about 200,000 protesters flooded a central plaza in Istanbul, making it the largest May Day rally there since 1977, when at least 34 people died and more than 100 were injured after shooting triggered a stampede. Turkish unions weren’t allowed back until last year.
Across Germany, about 423,000 people took to the streets to demand fair wages, better working conditions and sufficient social security, said the country’s unions’ umbrella group, DGB.
In Austria, more than 100,000 people peacefully took to the streets of Vienna, protest organizers said.
In Cuba, hundreds of thousands of people marched in Havana and other cities in a demonstration touted as a vast show of support for economic changes recently approved by the Communist Party.
In South Korea, police said 50,000 people rallied in Seoul for better labor protections. The people also urged the government to contain rising inflation, a growing concern across much of Asia.
Thousands of workers also marched in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Philippines.
In Moscow, up to 5,000 Communists and members of other groups carried a sea of red flags to celebrate their traditional holiday, which in Soviet times was known as the Day of International Solidarity of Workers.
