In much of the world, May 1, May Day-International Workers’ Day, celebrates the contributions of workers and unions past and present. These include progressive, humane policies such as child labor laws, workers compensation, and the weekend.
In the United States, May Day was established in the wake of the 1886 Haymarket Riot in Chicago, a bloody confrontation between police and primarily immigrant workers advocating for eight-hour workdays and workplace protections.
Even workers in Hawaii have also shed their blood, like the 16 Filipino strikers killed by the plantation bosses on Kauai in Hanapepe Sept. 9, 1924. A scuffle erupted between the strikers and the sheriffs. Strikers were viciously shot by sharpshooters in the back, in the head and through their hearts because they wanted a union, $2 a day instead of being paid $1 and working eight hours a day instead of 10.
This year the Hawai‘i Workers Center and the 19 partner organizations and labor unions that have joined together in the Defend & Support Hawai‘i’s Workers coalition will again march, rally and celebrate in Kalihi, beginning at 2:30 p.m. Sunday from Kalihi Valley District Park.
We will be joined by a delegation of baristas from Starbucks, Mililani Town Center, who recently organized to form a union, Starbucks Workers United, and will know the result of their votes on May 2. We will also be joined by members of the COFA Workers Association of Honolulu.
We hope we will be celebrating that this Legislature has enacted a significant increase in the minimum wage ($18 by 2026) and an expanded, refundable earned income tax credit.
About 14% of Hawaii’s workers are in minimum-wage jobs. Hawaii’s workers often have to work more than one job to survive and support their families. Only with income from more than one job can they pay for their rent, gas costs, insurance premiums, put food on the table, and purchase clothes for themselves and their children. Often these workers have no job security, no work benefits such as retirement plans, medical benefits or paid leave for vacation and/or sick leave.
Given these needs, so much more needs to be done. If the pandemic has taught us anything we need to ensure working families can thrive and work safely.
Many of those same workers who are struggling to make ends meet are also the ones who provided care and kept essential businesses and services running during the toughest days of the pandemic.
Yet our legislators have not seen fit to prohibit forced overtime for health care workers, or to affirm that graduate assistants have the right to unionize and collectively bargain.
Our legislators have failed to pass bills that would give paid sick leave and family leave so that all workers can afford to stay home when they are ill, and, in this way, keep us all safer.
They have not legislated even a few paid sick days so that all workers can afford to stay home when they are ill thus keeping us all safer. Paid sick leave is a public health, common- sense policy enacted by 11 states and numerous localities.
We hope to celebrate paid sick days for all Hawaii workers next May Day 2023.
