As the Labour Day holidays get underway, tens of thousands of protesters have gathered at rallies across the United States to call for stronger worker protections and attack a range of policies undertaken by the administration of US President Donald Trump.
More than 1,000 demonstrations are expected on Monday to span all 50 states, under the banner “Workers Over Billionaires.” The protests are a testament to the growing frustration among workers who feel that their rights are being whittled away by billionaires and corporate interests.
Protesters are demanding stronger worker protections, fully funded schools, healthcare and housing for all, and an end to corporate corruption, attacks on marginalized communities, and federal overreach under the Trump administration.
In New York, hundreds of people gathered outside the Trump Tower, chanting for Trump to step down and calling the president a fascist. As a brass band played, workers held up signs demanding a living wage and universal healthcare.
Giovanni Uribe, with the restaurant worker advocacy organization One Fair Wage, told Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey that he had come out to protest against billionaires whittling away the rights of workers.
The federally set minimum wage in the US is $7.25 an hour – a figure that has not been raised since 2009 due in part to the successful lobbying of industry groups.
Tipped workers, like wait staff, have a federally mandated “subminimum” wage of $2.13, a figure set in 1991 that is legally required to be offset to reach the $7.25 minimum – but which advocates say often results in wage theft. While some states have higher minimum wages – New York City’s currently stands at $16.50 – the figure is often far below a living wage.
According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a single adult without children would need an hourly wage of nearly $33 in NYC to cover average basic expenses.
In downtown Chicago, thousands turned out to demonstrate against Trump’s promise to target Chicago next in a deployment similar to those underway in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, two other Democrat-run cities.
Mayor Brandon Johnson, speaking to the crowd, vowed that Chicago would resist federal encroachment. “This is the city that will defend the country,” he said, receiving loud cheers from protesters waving blue-striped Chicago flags.
Protesters said they were concerned by Trump’s threat to send out the National Guard and additional agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Matt Duss, executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy and a former adviser to US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, told newsmen that while protesters in different locales may be attending rallies for a range of reasons, many of their financial concerns are likely to overlap.
“I think there are a set of shared concerns: the cost of living, the cost of housing, the cost of basic goods, groceries, the cost of education, the overall sense that people in the United States have lost control of their economic and political lives and their futures,” he said.
Trump, a real estate scion who came to power on a platform that in part tapped into popular economic frustration, is a billionaire himself and has loaded his administration with billionaires.
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