May Day Worker Solidarity in Trieste

May Day Worker Solidarity in Trieste

TRIESTE (05-01) – La Festa dei Lavoratori, (International Worker’s Day, May Day) is an important Italian national holiday that celebrates workers of the world by calling for better working conditions, wages and safety on the job in a display of solidarity for workers and women’s rights among numerous other labor, social and political issues. Many businesses and schools are closed today, and people are encouraged to not work or shop in solidarity.

In Trieste, thousands filled the streets for a protest march across the city before arriving at the Piazza Unità d’Italia in the city’s central port area, where a rally took place. Speakers voiced their concerns and demands both in Italian and Slovenian regarding labor and social reforms, demanding “Dignity, Future, Liberty” for all workers worldwide.

May 1st is also an important day for Trieste as it was the 81st anniversary of a more sinister event that took place here on May 1, 1945 when Yugoslav troops aligned with Jospi Tito, the Supreme Commander of the Yugoslav Partisans during WWII, occupied the city for 45 days in an attempt to “de-Italianize” the population for annexation to Yugoslavia. The brutal occupation which harshly punished political opponents and others was repelled by the Anglo-American allies in June thus liberating the postwar city.

Activists representing numerous organizations and organized labor included The National Association of Ex Deported Political Prisoners to Nazi Concentration Camps, The Union of Retired Persons, The Committee to Defend the Constitution, The Communist Revolutionary Party, The International Women’s House, The Family Counseling Center Participation Committee, Europa Green, and The Union of the People all marched in solidarity on this day.

Among the organized groups, too, were individual marchers holding handmade signs calling for living wages, to control violence against women, and equality in pay for all workers regardless of sex. Several held Palestinian flags in solidarity with the Palestinian people and called for an end to the genocide in Gaza, and for no military on the streets.

AI was also a topic regarding the predicted impact of perhaps as many as 70 percent of present jobs which would displace workers and the attendant impact that it would have on society.

One protester held a sign showing Saint Precario, the patron saint of the precarious who first “appeared in Ipercoop, a Milan supermarket in 2004 as an activists’ construct to represent “the underpaid, who suffer the pains of an intermittent income and who is oppressed by an uncertain future that is common to us all: sales clerk and programmer, factory worker and researcher.”

Another group held a banner proclaiming that the IMEC equals a “Corridor for War” expressing their doubts regarding the 2023 India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) proposal. Due to the present US/ Israeli war in Iran and general regional instability they oppose the geopolitical economic corridor that has been claimed would “strengthen commercial, digital, and energy connections.”

The proposal includes as its signatories, India, the U.S., UAE, Saudi Arabia, France, German, Italy and the European Union claiming it would benefit Europe, the Persian Gulf and Asia and would also likely include both Jordan and Israel as important transit hubs.

Organized labor in Italy plays an important role in protecting workers’ rights, and unions who regularly call strikes, or scioperi, to address a wide range of grievances. These actions are often announced on short notice because labor relations between workers and employers can be tense, and this month alone there are already five strikes scheduled.

May Day may be over, but the struggle has just begun!

Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

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