May Day is the international holiday celebrated by tens of millions of workers worldwide. It was born out of — and honors — the Chicago workers’ historic struggle for the eight-hour day on May 1, 1886. This launched general strike that spread to 350,000 workers across the country. It’s a day when workers around the globe march for their common demands, signifying international working-class solidarity.
In 1884, the AFL passed a resolution to make eight hours “a legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886.” Workers were forced to labor “from sun-up to sundown,” up to 14 hours a day. The Chicago Central Labor Council then called for a general strike on May 1, 1886, to demand the 8-hour day.
On that day, Chicago stood still as “Tens of thousands downed their tools and moved into the streets. No smoke curled from the tall chimneys of the factories and mills,” reported one paper.
On May 3, the cops murdered six strikers at the McCormick Reaper Works. The next day thousands marched in protest into Chicago’s Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown by a police agent. Four workers were killed, seven cops died and 200 workers were wounded in what became known as the Haymarket Massacre.
Nine demonstration leaders were framed for “instigating a riot.” Four were hung. A mass protest movement forced the Governor to free those still alive after the government admitted the frame-up.
The tens of thousands who won the 8-hour day saw it eroded, so another general strike was called for May 1, 1890. At the July 1889 meeting of the International Workers Association, organized and led by Karl Marx, the U.S. delegate reported on the struggle. The Association decided “to organize a great international demonstration, so that...on one appointed day the [world’s] toiling masses shall demand” the 8-hour day. “Since a similar demonstration has already been decided upon by the American Federation of Labor....this day is adopted for the international demonstration.”  This kind of international solidarity is vitally needed today.
As it progressed, the international communist movement took up the struggle and organized May 1st celebrations every year. In the U.S., it was championed for many years by the old Communist Party, with 250,000 marching in New York City in the 1940s. But when that party abandoned any communist principles, May Day was resurrected by the Progressive Labor Party in 1971 which advanced more revolutionary ideas. May Day marches have been organized by the PLP for the past 44 years, in many cities — Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Houston, Delano, California and others, as well as PLP contingents in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
In the U.S., bosses try to smear May Day as being “imported from Soviet Russia,” it remains as a significant contribution born in the actions of those Chicago strikers over a century ago. Today we march for the universal demands of all workers, regardless of capitalist-created borders: against imperialist war, against racism and sexism, for unity of immigrant and citizen workers, against wage slavery, against fascist police terror and for the communist solution to all these attacks facing the international working class.
How prophetic were the last words of Haymarket martyr August Spies as the hangman’s noose was tied around his neck and he declared, “There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!”

Newark, NJ, April 15 — Airport workers at the three major New York area airports are beginning to fight back against low wages, meager benefits and unsafe working conditions. They are called “passenger service workers” (PSWs), which include screeners, wheelchair attendants, baggage handlers, skycaps, ticket checkers, cabin cleaners, ramp agents and dispatchers.
Despite union misleadership and attempts to ally the workers with politicians, the workers are in a fighting spirit. About 75 airport workers joined 75 other people at a $15/hr minimum-wage demonstration today. Over 100 workers took copies of CHALLENGE. They chanted loudly as they marched from Newark City Hall to a local McDonald’s restaurant.
Wage Slavery Kills
A Summit on Poverty at a local college here highlighted the dire conditions of these workers, and featured their fighting spirit. Sponsored by SEIU 32B/J, the union organizing the workers, and several community organizations, the presentation started with two short films on organizing efforts in Newark and Philadelphia airports. A rank-and-file worker thanked the union for its organizing campaign, but said that the small wage increase gained by some of the workers (to $10.10/ hr) is nowhere near enough to support a family. She spoke eloquently about how workers must fight back against overwork that she said contributed to the on-the-job death of one of her coworkers.
Another speaker referred to the history of Newark International Airport to illustrate her point that this is a long-term struggle that must continue. Instead of the 3,500 jobs promised by the airline bosses and the Port Authority when the new airport was built in 1969, just 300 jobs materialized. Only a few being positions were filled with Black and Latin workers. Both she and a second speaker connected the current low-wage jobs to the capitalists’ need to exploit all workers, and to super-exploit Black and Latin workers.
That second speaker connected the increasing homelessness in Newark, where there are several tent cities, to the long-term decline in the U.S. of real wages, and of the real minimum wage. For example, the real minimum wage is 20 percent below what it was in 1969; the real minimum wage for skycaps and other positions depending on tips is almost 50 percent below its 1969 value. These pitiful wages mean workers spend a much higher percentage on basic necessities like housing and food. He said that recent studies show that there is an increasing number of employed workers who are homeless. These lower wages increase the value stolen by the capitalists, leading to higher profits for the airline bosses and their sleazy subcontractors.
Union Breeds Illusions
The union’s organizing campaign is based partly on the idea that the airline bosses can be convinced that it is in their interest to raise wages somewhat because there would be less worker turnover, more stable business conditions, and thus more regional growth. This is a deadly illusion. Maximizing profits is required by the laws of capitalist competition. As Karl Marx said, one capitalist kills many. The U.S. airline industry in particular, which now has only four major carriers, has seen decades of cost-cutting in all job classifications, and contracting out of lower-paying positions, creating company war chests that led to three major mergers and now record profits. This consolidation has also been subsidized by the capitalist government. Not including tax-free bonds and other giveaways, after the Sept. 11 attack, the federal government gave or loaned the airlines an additional $15 billion. Little to none of this money has gone into workers’ pockets. Many work for subcontractors who now control positions which were formerly unionized airline jobs. In 2014, the four biggest airlines raked in profits of $8 billion (USA Today, 1/27/15). Meanwhile, according to a 2012 report, the median wage for contracted PSWs is $8/hr, putting a family of four well below the poverty line. Seventeen percent of airport workers rely on Food Stamps to feed their families.
Poverty and racism are the inevitable products of a capitalist system that requires savage competition between the bosses in every industry, and a grinding down of the working class in each industry to the lowest wage possible for survival. But like the rebellion in Ferguson, the struggle of airport workers shows that workers can and will fight back. Only communism will abolish class distinctions and the hunger and homelessness that result from capitalism. Under communism, we will produce according to commitment and share whatever we produce according to need. Communist leadership in the current struggle of airport workers can hasten the day when we consign these horrors of capitalism to the scrap heap of history.

TEXAS, April 17 — In response to Dallas Police Department’s (DPD) racist recruiting efforts on campus, Progressive Labor Party students and neighborhood fighters demonstrated against police murders of mainly Black and Latin workers!
The DPD posted signs attempting to entice 200 students to join their racist police force. On the surface, DPD was looking for students from 18 to 24 years of age with 60-plus hours of college credits. The real reason they were specifically targeting our campus is because it’s an urban community college. In other words, they are trying to recruit working-class Black, Latin, and immigrant students, the very same students targeted by the cops. A comrade went up to one of the recruiters and asked what they were looking for, and the recruiter replied, “People from tougher neighborhoods.”
‘Whole Damn System Racist As Hell!’
In response to this racist outreach, a campus club wrote a leaflet on racist police terror and planned an action. While passing out this flyer, many students agreed that the police should not be on campus. During the demonstration, a large group of cops on bicycles circled us. Several police vans also monitored us. The kkkops eyed us continually throughout the action, trying to intimidate us. This only encouraged us to chant louder and louder! “Killer cops you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide” and “Indict, convict, send those killer cops to jail, the whole damn system is racist as hell!”
Students and fighters from the neighborhood united. We held signs to voice our anger with not only the recent recruitment on campus but also the racist police murders.
The cops’ desperate attempt to recruit our youth and students in the context of the Ferguson rebellion can be seen as a fascist strategy. What better way to discipline Black and Latin youth than to recruit them into the terror machine that is the police? The DPD is the ninth largest department in the U.S. The recruiters boast that they hire 35,000 people from around the U.S. per year from as far away as Kentucky, Arizona and New York. The students’ history of fighting racism on this campus is no secret. Following the Ferguson rebellion, we demonstrated in solidarity with the anti-racist fighters.
This fight at our community college is an important one. Fighting racism strikes at the heart of capitalism. As of today, the police killed 342 people throughout the U.S. this year alone. And they dare recruit Black and Latin youth to their racist terror force. No matter the “race” of a cop, a cop is a cop: enemy of the working class.
These cops plan to come back to our campus to recruit again. We plan to challenge them with further action and our communist politics. We will win more students, professors, and campus workers to our side.

New York City, April 15 — In one of the largest labor actions in recent history, tens of thousands of workers in 40 countries around the world went on strike against low wages today.
In New York City, workers and their supporters briefly blocked the Brooklyn Bridge and closed down a McDonald’s. Members of PLP marched and chanted shoulder to shoulder with these workers and over the course of the day we distributed hundreds of CHALLENGEs and 1,000 leaflets inviting workers to march with us on International Workers Day May 2.
There are over 1.5 million low-wage workers in NYC who can’t survive on $8.75/hr in the most expensive city in the U.S. The low-wage service sector — including fast food, restaurants, airport, retail, carwashers and home health attendants — is the fastest growing in the U.S.
From its beginnings capitalism has always been a barbaric system of wage slavery. The exploitation of all workers is based on racist super-exploitation of mainly Black, Latin and immigrant workers. While fast food workers make $350 a week, the bosses rob them of billions of dollars in their cutthroat battle for profits. This low-wage campaign does not even include the thousands of undocumented workers who work below minimum wage and cannot legally have $15/hr wages. There is no escape from class inequality under capitalism.
Capitalist politicians, union and community leaders support $15/hr. But the working class knows what we “win” under the capitalist system, the bosses take away with higher prices, taxes, periodic recessions, and depressions.
Capitalist reforms cannot solve the crisis of the world’s workers. The only solution is revolution for workers’ power to build an egalitarian society. March on International Workers Day and join the Progressive Labor Party!