May Day 2021 Remarks by Ann Toback, CEO of the Workers Circle

Delivered at the May Day Press Conference held in Washington Square Park on Saturday, May 1, 2021 that was sponsored by The May Day New York Coalition, an alliance of both labor and immigrant rights organizations, led by RWDSU, 32BJ SEIU, 1199 SEIU, DC37, LIUNA Local 78, LIUNA Local 79, the Workers Circle and the New York Immigration Coalition.

It is an honor commemorate and celebrate May Day—the Workers Day of Action-- with you today.  As we stand here in 2021, let us honor May Day’s beginnings with a national strike of tens of thousands of workers for the 8-hour work day in 1886, and also celebrate its renewal here in NYC in 2006 by workers and immigrants under the leadership of union leader, Kevin Lynch, may his memory be a blessing, who helped revive May Day here once again as a celebration of workers throughout the world seeking dignity on the job and a restructuring of wealth that would benefit all workers and their families.

The Workers Circle activist community was founded by Eastern European Jewish immigrants more than 120 years ago. Many of our founding immigrant members became part of an exploited workforce in the early garment industry, and quickly learned that they had to create solidarity and collective engagement among workers of different nationalities – across language, custom, and religion – in order to change the punitive workplace conditions they faced. 

In 1909 young Jewish, Italian, and Irish immigrant women workers in the New York City garment industry refused to accept dangerous and discriminative workplace conditions and took to the streets in a strike that became known as the Uprising of the 20,000. Their demands for justice and equality ignited the modern labor movement and ultimately transformed working conditions in the United States.  Their collective challenges and victories inspire our activism today. 

Our Workers Circle community of activists is proud to stand this May Day in solidarity with workers and immigrants and call for the passage of the Protect the Right to Organize Act and to urge Congress to create a pathway to citizenship for the millions of immigrant workers, Dreamers, and refugees who are part of the fabric of our nation.   As the pandemic has raged this past year across our country, thousands upon thousands of immigrant workers have made up the essential frontline workforce that has provided millions of Americans with the essential supports necessary for our everyday lives.

However, these essential immigrant workers have been treated as expendable by our government and the corporations that employ them. These courageous men and women who showed up to work in what became dangerous, deadly jobs harvesting our food, processing our meat, cleaning hospitals, laboring in warehouses, delivering packages, these essential workers were regularly denied basic protective gear and even sick time by corporations who valued their billions in profits more than the lives of their workers.

This May Day must be a turning point for our nation. Our Jewish tradition commands that we will not stand idly by as we see others exploited and in need. It is a call to action for solidarity, to use every ounce of the power we have to interrupt systematic harm and to create a lasting and just world.

And so, this May Day, we demand that the Senate, “not stand idly by!” That they use their power and the charge of the people they represent to protect and strengthen the rights of workers by passing the PRO Act, which will restore workers’ ability to organize and negotiate for better pay, benefits, and fairness on the job, and which will also promote racial equity by helping to close the Black–white wage gap, bringing greater equality to the workplace.

Today we join immigrants and workers across the country and demand that Congress act now to create a swift and sure pathway to citizenship for the millions of immigrants who call our nation home.

And we send a message on behalf of all of us here this May Day that we will not stand idly by as our brothers and sisters are exploited and harmed! We pledge to keep organizing and agitating, protesting and hunger striking, speaking and marching and voting-- until we realize an America that delivers on its promise of equality and dignity for workers, for immigrants, for all!