COVID-19 worries haunt workers
People mark May Day with demand for aid, safer work conditions
ATHENS, GREECE—Millions of workers worldwide marked international labour day on Friday trapped between hunger and fear — struggling without jobs or worried they don’t have enough protections against the coronavirus as more countries and states reopen for business.
Beijing’s Forbidden City — the imperial palace turned museum that is one of China’s biggest tourist attractions — started welcoming visitors again, and Bangladesh began reopening factories, as world leaders try to salvage their battered economies without causing a resurgence of the virus that has killed over 230,000 worldwide.
With traditional May Day labour marches curtailed by strict limits on public gatherings, Turkish protesters attempted to stage an unauthorized demonstration. California activists planned strikes and Parisians sang from balconies to plead their causes: workplace masks, health insurance and more government aid for the jobless.
It was a melancholy International Workers’ Day for garment workers across Southeast Asia such as Wiryono, a father of two in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, who was laid off last month as retailers slashed orders. His side gig delivering coffee dried up, too, amid a virus lockdown. So he set up a clothing repair business to make ends meet.
“I don’t earn as much as I got from the clothing factory. But I have to feed my wife and kids every day,” said Wiryono, who goes by only one name.
A government-ordered lockdown couldn’t extinguish the May Day protest spirit in Greece, where demonstrators lined up two metres apart in careful rows in Athens’ Syntagma Square. Organizers in masks and gloves used tape measures and large coloured squares to set out exact positions for the protesters. Greeks who work by making deliveries staged a motorized protest, driving through Athens on their motorbikes, and police were out in force to ensure residents didn’t head from cities to the countryside, another May Day tradition.
“We are praying for all workers, so that no one will lack work and all will be fairly paid and can enjoy the dignity of work and the beauty of rest,” Pope Francis said at a private morning mass.
In Spain, a huge field hospital that symbolized the country’s desperate battle against the virus held a ceremonial closing. Dozens of health workers shouted “Public Health!” and “We Want Tests!”
Nearly 40,000 Spanish health workers have contracted the virus, in part because of a scarcity of tests and protective clothing that forced many doctors and nurses to make suits out of garbage bags and other everyday products.
In the U.S., dozens of states let restaurants, stores or other businesses reopen Friday in the biggest one-day push yet to get their economies up and running again, acting at their own speed and with their own restrictions and quirks to make sure the coronavirus doesn’t come storming back.
People in Louisiana could eat at restaurants again, though they had to sit outside at tables three metres apart with no waiter service. Maine residents could attend church services as long as they stayed in their cars. And a Nebraska mall reopened with Plexiglas barriers and hand-sanitizing stations, but few shoppers.
May Day is a state holiday in many countries, but lockdowns mean this is the first time that Russia — whose prime minister has the virus — will not hold mass demonstrations at Red Square. In Turkey, police and protesters wearing masks faced off in Istanbul, and 15 people were detained for defying confinement rules.
In the Czech Republic, people honked horns, played drums or shouted at midday in a special “noisy protest” over the government’s handling of the crisis.
Some Paris residents defied home confinement rules to hold unauthorized protests. Others staged a midday musical protest against French President Emmanuel Macron’s handling of the pandemic, singing from balconies and windows.