The United States braced on Monday for a ”Day without Immigrants”, a nationwide strike and business boycott organised by illegal immigrants and their supporters in a bid to push through immigration reform that would legalise the presence of an estimated 12-million undocumented workers in the country.
Many Hispanic groups urged their members to forgo work, school and shopping on Monday to demonstrate illegal immigrants’ economic and political power.
”We have to make our presence felt through our absence,” organisers from the nation’s most influential Hispanic groups said on Friday at their final press conference before the mass boycott.
Monday is a normal work day in the US, where Labour Day is celebrated in September instead of May 1. However, it might look more like a May Day abroad, complete with demonstrations called by labour unions and workers’ rights advocates.
The demonstration was planned by a network representing about 40-million Hispanics.
”We’ve unequivocally called on all families to participate in the Great American Boycott and the marches — and that translates into not going to work, not going to school, not shopping and not selling,” said Nativo Lopez, president of the Mexican-American Political Association.
However, city and school officials and the ”We Are America” coalition, which includes the Roman Catholic Church, were encouraging people to go to school and work and then join the demonstrations later in the day.
The division over the way the protests should be carried out is as evident among political leaders as it is among unions.
President George Bush criticised the boycott and a measure to have a Spanish version of the US national anthem, urging immigrants instead to learn English so they can sing the original version of the song.
California’s Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger also denounced Monday’s boycott, but the state’s Democrat-dominated Senate approved a resolution supporting it.
Meanwhile, food giants such as Tyson Food and Cargill Foods announced the closing of at least eight plants, while Goya Foods announced a complete halt in its daily distribution. All three companies said they understood the sentiments behind the protest.
”It’s no surprise that food companies are taking a position favouring workers, given that many of them employ immigrants, most of them Hispanic and many of them illegal,” said Angel Luevano, spokesperson for the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Wal-Mart, which employs more than 1,3-million people, has not yet announced what it would do if a sizable number of its Hispanic employees took the day off.
The US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, however, cautioned that workers must first get their bosses’ consent to be absent from work on Monday, in order to protect themselves from being fired. Nonetheless, it voiced support for the ”just reform” the immigrants are seeking.
The stand taken by the chamber — representing nearly two million Hispanic-owned businesses that bring in $300-billion in sales each year — was echoed by the National Council of Chain Restaurants, which represents 40 different chains with about 2,8-million workers.
Leaders from unions within the AFL-CIO, a labour umbrella group of more than nine million workers, said they support the strike and pledged to join the demonstrations. But the United Farm Workers’ Union, although it supports immigration reform, urged members to participate in the rally after work, to avoid being fired.
Meanwhile, a group of lawyers in Los Angeles announced that they would be outside the city’s immigration office on May 5 to volunteer their services to anyone who is penalised for taking part in the demonstration.
”In California, the world’s fifth-largest economy, one in every four residents was born elsewhere, so it is important to realise that our economy has come to depend on immigrants,” Gloria Romero, the Democratic state Senator who introduced the resolution supporting the boycott, said on Friday.
Though the economic impact of the ”Day without Immigrants” is hard to predict, some analysts expect a major social impact akin to the dawning of the US civil rights movement in the 1960s.
Europe
Labour unions and workers across Europe held events on Monday to protest against unemployment, poor working conditions and low wages. In other countries, activists used the day to complain about their governments or the international situation.
In Germany, labour unions protested against the impact of globalisation on Europe’s largest economy, accusing firms of sacrificing jobs for quick profit and urging the government to introduce a minimum wage.
Michael Sommer, the head of Germany’s main union federation, complained that in addition to high unemployment, Germany has a growing army of people earning miserable wages, despite strong business profits.
”We don’t want American conditions,” Sommer said at a rally in Wolfsburg, home of car maker Volkswagen AG. ”It is really time to stop this madness. Those in government must show creativity instead of putting new thumbscrews on the long-term unemployed.”
Years of slow economic growth and massive job cuts by German firms have pushed up unemployment in Germany — it now stands at 11,5% — undermining government finances and the country’s generous welfare state.
In Istanbul, Turkish police detained about 40 protesters who were shouting slogans against the International Monetary Fund and the US.
The protesters in Taksim Square were members of the Turkish Communist Party, the Labour Party and a group that called itself ”Struggle”. They did not have a permit for a May Day demonstration, although other large protests did have.
The group refused police demands to disperse, and police fired pepper spray and tear gas at the crowd. Footage broadcast on CNN-Turk showed protesters fighting with police and one protester cowering in a bus as a police officer beat him with his fists.
In Mersin in the south-east, police detained two communist protesters who were said to be planning to celebrate International Workers’ Day with petrol bomb attacks.
About 2 000 opposition supporters gathered in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, in a show of defiance after the jailing of the opposition’s leadership by the authoritarian government.
The wife of Alexander Milinkevich, Inna Kulei, told the crowd she had visited him in prison, where the jail authorities had moved all the opposition leaders to separate cells, and refused to answer her inquiries about his health. ”You can’t smother freedom, you can’t kill it. These senseless repressions by the authorities only bring the day of freedom closer,” she said.
In Bosnia, where the holiday is normally marked by picnics and celebration, the unemployed used the day to march down the Sarajevo main street, demanding new elections and the resignation of the government, which they claim is not doing enough to lower the unemployment rate and bring Bosnia closer to the European Union.
The unemployment rate in the country has been above 40% for years. Bosnia is struggling with the destruction of its economy and infrastructure as well as the ethnic division that resulted from the 1992-1995 war.
In the Austrian capital, Vienna, about 120 000 members of the opposition Social Democratic Party participated in a traditional May Day march, a show of party pride ahead of this autumn’s parliamentary elections.
The crowd, which organisers said numbered about 10 000 more than last year, gathered on Vienna’s downtown Rathausplatz for speeches by party leader Alfred Gusenbauer, Vienna mayor Michael Hauepl and other officials.
Austria’s stubborn 8% unemployment was a recurring theme, with Gusenbauer and other party leaders accusing conservative Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel’s government of not doing enough to help the nation’s 300 000 jobless find work.
Asia
Police were on high alert in Asia as protesters rallied on Monday to demand better working conditions, with helicopters hovering overhead in Indonesia and riot police guarding the presidential palace in the Philippines.
In Sri Lanka, where violence between Tamil Tiger rebels and the military has sparked fears of a return to civil war, the government decided to cancel all May Day rallies in the capital.
Demonstrations were planned in major cities across Indonesia, with up to 50 000 people expected in the capital alone to protest against government plans to revise a labour law — cutting severance packages and introducing more flexible contracts that would chip away at worker security.
”Don’t change the law,” thousands of labourers chanted at Jakarta’s main downtown roundabout, as others arrived in buses and trucks, waiving green, yellow and red flags and banners expressing their demands.
Fearing violence, about 13 000 police officers were deployed on the streets, some carrying riot shields and manning water cannons, said police chief Major General Firman Ganisaid. Embassies and companies told foreigners to stay away from the demonstrations, though there were no reports of incidents by midday.
In the Philippines, which has been plagued by coup rumours, government troops and police armed with batons and shields turned away hundreds of activists who tried to approach the presidential palace in the capital early on Monday.
But thousands of others vowed to mass there later to mark May Day and demand President Gloria Arroyo’s ouster over vote-rigging and corruption allegations.
Other protests were planned at the historic Mendiola bridge, which has become a symbol of anti-government resistance, where about 500 police officers stood guard backed by troops armed with assault rifles and shoulder-fired weapons.
Metropolitan Manila police chief Vidal Querol appealed to protesters to gather in five designated ”freedom parks” in Manila and avoid the presidential palace area to prevent any violent showdown. ”We don’t want Labour Day to be shrouded as a day of defiance to the law,” he said.
In Cambodia, thousands of police brought the capital, Phnom Penh, to a virtual standstill during a government clampdown on unauthorised May Day demonstration.
Opposition leader Sam Rainsy said one protest organiser was detained by police for two hours after hundreds of workers gathered on Russian Boulevard — a main road into the capital — seeking to march through the city.
The government had denied permission for the rally, allowing only one official May Day demonstration at Chenla theatre, and police armed with riot shields and batons physically prevented protesters from marching.
”Cambodia still lacks real democracy; there is no real respect for human rights,” Rainsy said.
Russian Federation
Tens of thousands of people marched through central Moscow on Monday to celebrate May Day in peaceful demonstrations organised by pro-government trade unions and communists nostalgic for Soviet times.
About 25 000 trade-union members marched peacefully through central Moscow calling for a ”social state”, holding balloons and flowers, a police spokesperson, Viktor Biryukov, was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying.
Several thousand Communist Party supporters then began marching from the Lenin monument on October Square to a bust of Karl Marx near Red Square, carrying red flags and portraits of Stalin, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporter at the march said.
”Putin resign!” and ”Our homeland is the USSR” chanted participants, who also held up banners reading ”Stop the arbitrary laws of the oligarchs against the workers” and ”The break-up of the USSR has condemned the people to poverty”.
The demonstrations took place amid high security, with Itar-Tass news agency reporting that 7 000 police officers were being deployed in the streets of Moscow.
About 30 000 people marched through the far-eastern Russian city of Vladivostok on Monday, while only 200 attended the Communist Party’s traditional May Day rally, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
The march, organised by regional authorities in a style strongly reminiscent of Soviet times, was devoted to the four ”national projects” set by President Vladimir Putin last year — health, education, agriculture and housing — and was divided up into four sections accordingly.
Students and academics walked behind a large car bearing a placard reading ”education”, people from medical institutes were in the health section, farmers in agriculture and factory workers in housing.
”I am certain that it is very important to return to everything that was good and dear to many generations,” Sergei Darkin, governor of the Primorsky region, told reporters.
Authorities in Vladivostok revived the tradition of large-scale May Day rallies four years ago and the numbers of people attending are growing, with companies and political parties using the event as an advertising opportunity.
Regional officials put the number of participants at 50 000 but an AFP reporter estimated the figure was closer to 30 000 people, while about 200 people attended a May Day demonstration organised by the Communist Party outside the railway station.
The port city of Vladivostok is located about 6 400km east of Moscow on Russia’s Pacific coast. — Sapa-AFP, Sapa-AP