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Public Service Workers Are Teaching Us a Lesson
This Public Service Recognition Week, we can show our appreciation for their grit and dedication by taking a page out of their book and joining the fight to protect public services and workers’ voices on the job.
May 04, 2026
There is no sector of the workforce more resilient than those who work in public service. As billionaires raise costs for working families and funding for essential services is slashed, these workers are being asked to do more with less.
Every day they go above and beyond to respond to the needs of their community: stepping up during extreme weather events, responding to emergencies, educating the next generation, keeping our streets clean, caring for patients and the elderly, ensuring public safety, and so much more.
This Public Service Recognition Week, we can show our appreciation for their grit and dedication by taking a page out of their book and joining the fight to protect public services and workers’ voices on the job.
Despite the importance of all they do, public service workers are often met with attacks by anti-union politicians, rather than the support they deserve. These attacks include budget cuts that endanger their jobs, staffing crises that jeopardize safety for everyone, and threats to pay and benefits.
The best way to channel our love for this country and commitment to our communities is by getting organized and standing together to make working people’s lives better.
Never giving in, public service workers answer this assault by getting organized.
Nationwide, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) members are using their union voice to demand more for their communities. Since the extremists in Congress and the Trump administration recklessly slashed funding for Medicaid, food assistance, and other programs to give tax breaks to billionaires, AFSCME members have been fighting at the state and local level to protect schools, hospitals, public works projects, and more.
In the courts, AFSCME members have successfully protected funding for museums, libraries, and childcare. And at the bargaining table, they continue to negotiate for fair wages, safe staffing, and respect, all of which ensure public services remain strong for the community.
They don’t do it to get rich or get famous. They keep going—behind the scenes and outside the limelight—because working in public service is their life’s calling.
Their resilience and perseverance teaches all of us an important lesson: The best way to channel our love for this country and commitment to our communities is by getting organized and standing together to make working people’s lives better.
So, this week, remember to stop and show your appreciation for the public service workers who show up every single day by joining them in the fight.
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Black Friday Actions in 30+ Countries Aim to 'Make Amazon Pay'
"When we announced our intention to protest today, our management attempted to stop us in multiple ways. We want to say to Amazon—you could not stop us today, you cannot stop us in the future," said one union leader.
Nov 29, 2024
Amazon workers and their allies are participating in a series of global actions aimed at holding the online retailer "accountable for labor abuses, environmental degradation, and threats to democracy," according to the labor group UNI Global Union.
Dubbed "Make Amazon Pay," the campaign is set to last from November 29 to December 2 and will include strikes and protests across six continents, according to the group—and is timed to disrupt Black Friday (or "Make Amazon Pay Day") and Cyber Monday, two of the busiest online shopping days of the year.
"When we announced our intention to protest today, our management attempted to stop us in multiple ways. We want to say to Amazon—you could not stop us today, you cannot stop us in the future," said the general secretary of the Amazon India Workers Union during a demonstration held in India on Friday.
Make Amazon Pay Day was launched in 2020 by UNI Global Union and the left-leaning movement group Progressive International. It has expanded each subsequent year, say organizers, and today the coalition behind Make Amazon Pay Day brings together a wide range of groups, including climate, racial, and economic justice organizations.
According to Progressive International, actions taking place as part of the campaign include but are not limited to: strikes at multiple warehouses in Germany; direct actions in French towns and cities led by the justice group Attac; a rally in India by Amazon workers over unsafe working conditions; and a protest by trade unionists at an Amazon call center. All told, actions are supposed to take place in over 30 countries.
"This fight is global. Every picket, every strike, every action of solidarity matters. Another world is possible, and we are building that world one strike, one conversation at a time. Together, we are unstoppable," said Christy Hoffman, UNI Global Union's general secretary, on Friday while speaking to striking workers in Germany.
The campaign alleges that Amazon "squeezes" workers, communities, and the planet. For example, "while tripling profits in early 2024, Amazon surveils and pressures drivers and warehouse workers at the risk of severe physical and mental harm," according to campaign materials.
Responding to the campaign, an Amazon U.S. spokesperson told Newsweek: "The fact is at Amazon we provide great pay, great benefits, and great opportunities—all from day one. We've created more than 1.5 million jobs around the world, and counting, and we provide a modern, safe, and engaging workplace whether you work in an office or at one of our operations buildings."
Online, progressive political figures lent their support to the effort.
"Today, I stand with Amazon workers in over 30 countries around the world striking and protesting to #MakeAmazonPay," wrote Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the British Labour Party.
"While billionaire Bezos tours the world on his $500m yacht, Amazon workers in 20+ countries are rising up this Black Friday to demand fair wages, union rights, and climate action. Amazon must pay its fair share and respect workers. I stand with #MakeAmazonPay," chimed in U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on X.
Following the inaugural Make Amazon Pay campaign in 2020, hundreds of lawmakers from dozens of countries endorsed the effort with an open letter to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
"The world knows that Amazon can afford to pay its workers, its environmental cost, and its taxes. And yet—time and again—you have dodged and dismissed your debts to workers, societies, and the planet," the letter alleged. U.S. signatories included Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
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May Day's Legacy Lives On
Progressive economic ideas have been on the whole an anathema to the U.S. political establishment and violence against labor militancy has always been the norm for almost all of the country’s political history. Nonetheless, the U.S. labor movement has not yet been defeated.
May 01, 2024
May 1st is International Workers’ Day and was established as such in celebration of the struggle for the introduction of the eight-hour workday and in memory of Chicago’s Haymarket Affair, which took place in 1886. May 1st is celebrated in over 160 countries with large-scale marches and protests as workers across the globe continue to fight for better working conditions, fair wages, and other labor rights. International Workers’ Day, however, is not celebrated in the U.S. and has in fact been practically erased from historical memory. But this shouldn’t be surprising since U.S. capitalism operates on the basis of a brutal economy where maximization of profit takes priority over everything else, including the environment and even human lives.
Indeed, the U.S. has a notorious record when it comes to worker rights. The country has the most violent and bloody history of labor relations in the advanced industrialized world, according to labor historians. Subsequently, unionization has always faced an uphill battle as corporations are allowed to engage in widespread union-busting practices through manipulation or violation of federal labor law. The recent activities of Amazon and Starbucks speak volumes of the anti-union mentality that pervades most U.S. corporations. Accordingly, unionization in the U.S. has been on decline for decades even though the majority of Americans see this development as a bad thing.
The backlash against unionization and worker rights in general in the U.S. also takes place against the backdrop of an insidious ideological framework in which it has been regarded as a self-evident truth that individuals are responsible for their own fate and that government should not interfere with the free market out of concern for social and economic inequalities.
While May Day may have been formally obliterated by the powers that be from U.S. public awareness, the labor movement is still alive and kicking.
Social Darwinism first appeared in U.S. political and social thought in the mid-1860s, as historian Richard Hofstadter showed in his brilliant work Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915, but it would be a gross mistake to think that it ever went away. The conservative counterrevolution launched by Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s and refined by Bill Clinton in the early 1990s aimed at bringing back the loathsome idea that the government should not interfere in the “survival of the fittest” by helping the weak and the poor. Progressive economic ideas have been on the whole an anathema to the U.S. political establishment and violence against labor militancy has always been the norm for almost all of the country’s political history.
Long before the movement for an eight-hour workday in the U.S., which can be largely attributed to the influx of European immigrants mainly from Italy and Germany, radicalism had set foot across a number of post-colonial states. Rhode Island, often referred to as the Rogue Island, had one of the most radical economic policies on revolutionary debt, which was wildly popular with farmers and common folks in general, and experimented with the idea of radical democracy. At approximately the same time, Shays’ rebellion in Massachusetts was also about money, debts, poverty, and democracy. Naturally, the elite in both states pulled out all stops to put an end to radicalism, and the pattern of suppressing popular demands has somehow survived in U.S. politics across time.
The pattern of suppressing social and political movements from below continued well into modern times. The Red Scare, climaxed in the late 1910s on account of the Russian revolution and the rise of labor strikes and then renewed with the anti-communist campaign of the 1940s, played a crucial role in the establishment’s fervent dedication to crushing radicalism in the U.S. and putting an end to challenges against capitalism.
In light of this, it is nothing short of a shame that May Day has been all but forgotten in U.S. political culture even though the day traces its origins to the fight of American laborers for a shorter workday.
Last year, after marching on May Day with thousands of other people in the streets of Dublin, one of the questions that was posed to me was how could it be that International Workers’ Day is not celebrated in the U.S. I am still struggling to come up with a convincing explanation, as may be evident from this essay, but Gore Vidal was not off the mark when he said, “we are the United States of Amnesia.”
Nonetheless, the U.S. labor movement has not yet been defeated and is surely not dead. In spite of the bloody suppression and the constant intimidation over many decades, the U.S. labor movement has made its presence felt on numerous historic occasions, from the Battle of Cripple Creek in 1894 and the 1892 Homestead Strike in Pennsylvania to being behind the historic 1963 march on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and continues doing so down to this day. Scores of victories for the working class were achieved last year—and all against prevailing odds. Moreover, in 2023, labor strikes in the U.S. jumped to a 23-year high and some of the largest labor disputes in the history of the U.S. were also recorded last year.
So, while May Day may have been formally obliterated by the powers that be from U.S. public awareness, the labor movement is still alive and kicking. Even a small victory is still a victory, though time will tell of the historic significance of each step forward. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that the unionists, socialists, and anarchists that made Chicago in 1886 the center of the national movement for the eight-hour workday had foreseen what the impact of their actions would be in the struggle of the international labor movement for democracy, better wages, safer working conditions, and freedom of speech. All these social rights have been amplified over time, though much remains to be accomplished and the struggle continues.
But this is all the more reason why we must not forget—and indeed celebrate every year with marches and protests—May 1st.
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Workers Around World Mark May Day With Marches and Rallies Demanding Fair Wages and Workplace Justice
"Our rights weren't gifted. They were won by workers who refused to accept second best."
May 01, 2019
Workers in countries all over the world joined marches and rallies on Wednesday to mark International Workers' Day, or May Day, with progressive political leaders joining some events and other protests being quashed by law enforcement.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was among the organizations that promoted the international event on social media, tweeting, "A fighting workers' union is the answer" to workplace injustice.
Demonstrations in Paris on Wednesday were among the rallies that have grown violent through the years.
Police fired tear gas at protesters as the French government warned the demonstration may be overtaken by vandals.
Other rallies across Europe and around the world remained peaceful, with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators calling on governments to push for family leave laws, fair living wages, and an end to workplace discrimination, particularly against immigrants.
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In the U.S., a number of other labor organizations tweeted about the day's significance.
Progressive lawmakers from around the world, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Barbara Lee in the U.S. and British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, tweeted support for workers who were protesting Wednesday.
May Day's roots date back to the late 19th century in the Chicago, where workers went on strike to protest their long, grueling working hours in unsafe factories, construction sites, and other environments. The protests are credited with beginning the labor movement in the United States.
The labor celebration is now an official holiday in 66 countries.
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Though Noting It Should Be Higher, Sanders Backs Obama Pay Bump for Overtime Workers
Update of labor protections, said presidential candidate, will prevent corporations and large employees from shirking their responsibility to pay fair wages
Jun 30, 2015
Though he was quick to note that even more Americans deserve fair compensation for working more than 40 hours per week, presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday endorsed President Barack Obama's announcement that he will soon update overtime pay regulations--a move that will give approximately 5 million middle-income workers a bump in their annual pay.
"We've got to keep making sure hard work is rewarded," Obama wrote in an op-ed announcing his decision. "Right now, too many Americans are working long days for less pay than they deserve. That's partly because we've failed to update overtime regulations for years--and an exemption meant for highly paid, white collar employees now leaves out workers making as little as $23,660 a year--no matter how many hours they work."
Under current overtime rules, full-time employees who work at least 40 hours and make more than $455 a week (or $23,660 per year) are considered management and are not eligible for overtime pay. But the new proposal--which can be implemented by executive order and without congressional approval--would raise the threshold to $970 per week (or $50,400 annually).
Jared Bernstein, a former White House adviser and now a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, explained in the Washington Post on Tuesday why protections for this kind of workers were initially imposed:
Because [the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938, legislation that included a national minimum wage and time-and-a-half pay for hourly and certain salaried workers after 40 hours of weekly work] needed to preempt the possibility that some employers might just label someone a salaried worker to avoid having to pay time-and-a-half. So a salary threshold was introduced, below which workers were automatically non-exempt. The problem is the threshold wasn't regularly adjusted for inflation, and while it has been sporadically raised, it has fallen well behind its historical levels, once you adjust for inflation (the new rule also proposes to index the new threshold to either price or wage growth; which one will be decided during the forthcoming comment period, where outside stakeholders can weigh in on the proposed rule).
According to Bernstein, who praised the move by Obama, it would be very difficult to "come up with a rule change or executive order--i.e., non-legislation--to lift the pay of this many middle-wage workers." It's especially important, he said, "because we live in a time when the bargaining power of many who depend on their paychecks is much diminished relative to the clout and power of those whose income derives from their wealth portfolios."
Sanders, who has made raising workers' wages and combating the nation's extreme levels of economic inequality a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, said Obama's move is good news for the nation's struggling workers.
"Businesses no longer will be able to shirk their responsibility to pay fair wages by simply labeling workers earning as little as $24,000-a-year as supervisors," said Sanders.
If it was up to him, however, Sanders said he would have raised the eligibility for the salary limit even higher--up from Obama's $970 per week to $1,090.
Earlier this year, Sanders and 25 other senators sent a letter to the White House urging the U.S. Department of Labor to modernize overtime regulations. In the letter, they detailed how many U.S. corporations had exploited antiquated regulations to avoid paying time-and-a-half for workers who put in more than 40 hours a week on the job.
"These long hours are straining middle-class workers and their families," the letter stated. "Since the 1970s, average salaries for middle-class individuals have dropped even while salaried workers have increased the hours they spend on the job. Strengthening overtime protections will help millions of middle-class families."
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Down to the Wire on Fast Track, Groups Call on Lawmakers: 'Don't Cave'
Labor leader demands that lawmakers 'stand up for the working people who voted them into office'
Jun 12, 2015
A cliffhanger vote is expected on Friday as the U.S. House of Representatives takes up Fast Track, or trade promotion authority, which would cut off lawmakers' ability to amend or filibuster corporate-friendly trade agreements, reducing the role of Congress to an up-or-down vote.
Civil society and social movement groups from around the U.S. and world criticize Fast Track as a tool for ramming through secret corporate-friendly deals, at the expense of people and the planet. In April, some 2,000 such groups described Fast Track as "an abrogation of not only Congress's constitutional authority but of its responsibility to the American people."
| Tweets about #StopFastTrack OR #FastTrack OR #NoTPP |
Leading up to the Fast Track vote, labor, environmental, public health, and social justice organizations warned lawmakers that votes in favor of Fast Track could be politically dangerous.
Consider, for example, this email from Democracy for America chair Jim Dean to members: "Ahead of today's votes we wanted to be very clear to Democratic members of Congress: If you vote for either Medicare-cutting Trade Adjustment Assistance legislation or Fast Track Authority for the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership, we will not lift a finger or raise a penny to protect you when you're attacked in 2016, we will encourage our progressive allies to join us in leaving you to rot, and we will actively search for opportunities to primary you with a real Democrat."
And in a jointly penned op-ed published Friday in The Hill, 350.org executive director May Boeve and Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ president Hector Figueroa slammed the "massive boondoggle of a trade deal" known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Passage of that secretly negotiated trade pact between the U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim countries would be facilitated by Fast Track approval.
"You'd be hard-pressed to find any time in history when that kind of opaque, secretive process has ever helped anyone besides the uber-wealthy--and this time's no exception," Boeve and Figueroa wrote.
"From what we've seen of the TPP," they continued, "we're against it, labor unions and environmentalists alike, because it would mean disaster for the issues that both of our movements care about. It's a giveaway to corporations that tilts the playing field against workers even more, razing basic labor rights. The deal would also worsen climate change, full stop, because TPP makes it easier for massive fossil fuel corporations to pull climate-destroying carbon pollution out of the ground."
According to news reports, last-minute negotiations are centered on a bill granting aid to workers displaced by trade, known as Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), which is linked to the Fast Track legislation.
As it stands, the House is scheduled to vote Friday on both Fast Track and TAA. If the TAA bill is defeated, however, there won't even be a vote on Fast Track--which, according to The Hill, "has created an incentive for Democrats opposed to Fast Track to vote against TAA, in the hopes it will drag the entire package down."
As Politico reports, such 11-hour uncertainty has President Barack Obama in the middle of a "frantic campaign" to convince Democrats to back his trade agenda.
In a statement issued Friday, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka warned lawmakers not to "cave to the corporate interests that have far too much influence on the American economy."
Calling on legislators to "stand up for the working people who voted them into office," Trumka added: "When working people send Members to Congress it is their hope that they will honor that trust and act in their best interests. That means supporting fair wages, safe working conditions and a real opportunity to compete in the global economy. But passage of [Fast Track] would do the opposite. It would lead to another bad trade deal that will cost American jobs. Deals like this are why voters are frustrated and think that Washington is broken.
"But we can do better than this," Trumka concluded. "By defeating [Fast Track] Congress can send a message that our government belongs not to the highest corporate bidders but to the working people who make our country run."
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