BERLIN — About 400,000 people took to the streets in Germany yesterday as marchers around the world demanded more jobs, better working conditions, and higher wages on international workers’ day.
In Turkey, 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 injured after a shooting triggered a stampede. Turkish unions weren’t allowed back until last year.
Across Germany, some 423,000 people took to the streets to demand fair wages, better working conditions, and sufficient social security, the country’s unions’ umbrella-group, DGB said.
Michael Sommer, head of the German federation of unions, said the turnout — similar to last year’s — was a clear message to the government that it should give up its refusal to introduce a national minimum wage.
In Austria, more than 100,000 people peacefully took to the streets of Vienna, protest organizers said. Chancellor Werner Faymann promised social policies and warned against leaving too much room to financial speculation, Austrian news agency APA reported.
In New York, labor leaders from Wisconsin joined activists to march for the rights of America’s immigrants and workers. Immigration advocates latched onto the May Day tradition in 2006....
And here it has to be turned into an agenda-pushing operation.
In Cuba, hundreds of thousands of people marched through Havana and other cities to mark May Day in a demonstration promoted as a vast show of support for economic changes recently approved by the Communist Party.
Related: CIA in Cuba
But I don't think they were behind those.
In South Korea, police said 50,000 rallied in Seoul for better labor protections and urged the government to contain rising inflation.
