Because the Labor Day holidays get beneath means, tens of 1000’s of protesters have gathered at rallies throughout america to name for stronger employee protections and assault a variety of insurance policies undertaken by the administration of US President Donald Trump.
Greater than 1,000 demonstrations are anticipated on Monday to span all 50 states, beneath the banner “Employees Over Billionaires.”
Protesters are demanding stronger employee protections, absolutely funded colleges, healthcare and housing for all, and an finish to company corruption, assaults on marginalised communities, and federal overreach beneath the Trump administration.
In New York, a whole bunch of individuals gathered exterior the Trump Tower, chanting for Trump to step down and calling the president a fascist. As a brass band performed, staff held up indicators demanding a dwelling wage and common healthcare.
‘Subminimum’ wage
Giovanni Uribe, with the restaurant employee advocacy organisation One Honest Wage, informed Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey he had come out to protest towards billionaires whittling away the rights of staff.
“Service staff in New York Metropolis are the spine of this metropolis,” he mentioned. “The Nationwide Restaurant Affiliation is our primary opponent that’s combating to maintain subminimum wage intact in order that they don’t should pay their staff their full minimal wage to outlive. So we’re simply asking for a livable wage.”
The federally set minimal wage within the US is $7.25 an hour – a determine that has not been raised since 2009 due partly to the profitable lobbying of trade teams. Tipped staff, like wait workers, have a federally mandated “subminimum” wage of $2.13, a determine set in 1991 that’s legally required to be offset to succeed in the $7.25 minimal – however which advocates say usually ends in wage theft.
Whereas some states have greater minimal wages – New York Metropolis’s at the moment stands at $16.50 – the determine is commonly far beneath a dwelling wage.
In keeping with the MIT Dwelling Wage Calculator, a single grownup with out kids would wish an hourly wage of practically $33 in NYC to cowl common primary bills. Mississippi, which has one of many lowest prices of dwelling within the nation and has no state minimal wage, has a dwelling wage of $20.75 – practically 3 times the minimal wage.
Chicago protests goal Nationwide Guard
In downtown Chicago, 1000’s turned out to display towards Trump’s promise to focus on Chicago subsequent in a deployment much like these beneath means in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, two different Democrat-run cities.
Mayor Brandon Johnson, chatting with the group, vowed that Chicago would resist federal encroachment.
“That is the town that may defend the nation,” he mentioned, receiving loud cheers from protesters waving blue-striped Chicago flags.
As the group wove by the town, some marchers strolling canines and carrying kids on their shoulders, diners sitting exterior at native eating places and cafes pumped their fists and automobiles honked in assist.
Protesters mentioned they had been involved by Trump’s risk to ship out the Nationwide Guard and extra brokers from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Filiberto Ramirez, 72, feared violence if further ICE brokers got here to the town. “Can we really feel there’s gonna be bother? Sure,” Ramirez mentioned. “I hope no one will get damage.”
Trump has singled out Chicago in latest weeks over violent crime, calling the town “a large number”, “a hellhole”, and a “killing area”. However on Monday, Chicagoans on the protest mentioned they didn’t really feel the Nationwide Guard was an answer to crime within the metropolis.
“There’s a crime drawback,” mentioned Yvonne Spears, 67, “however the Nationwide Guard is meant to battle for us, not towards us.”
Murder charges within the nation’s third-largest metropolis have plunged lately, in keeping with metropolis crime knowledge. And although a 2025 College of Chicago survey reported roughly half of Chicagoans really feel unsafe of their neighbourhoods at night time, many protesters mentioned on Monday that they felt largely protected within the metropolis.
Metropolis and state leaders have already readied measures to protect Chicago from federal troops and would probably launch a slew of lawsuits difficult a deployment, which authorized specialists mentioned would violate the US Structure and a Nineteenth-century legislation prohibiting the army from implementing home legal guidelines.
‘Employees Over Billionaires’
Matt Duss, govt vice-president on the Middle for Worldwide Coverage and a former adviser to US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, informed Al Jazeera that whereas protesters in several locales could also be attending rallies for a variety of causes, a lot of their monetary considerations are prone to overlap.
“I feel there are a set of shared considerations: the price of dwelling, the price of housing, the price of primary items, groceries, the price of training, the general sense that individuals in america have misplaced management of their financial and political lives and their futures,” he mentioned.
Trump, an actual property scion who got here to energy on a platform that partly tapped into widespread financial frustration, is a billionaire himself and has loaded his administration with billionaires.
Essentially the most well-known of them – Elon Musk – served as Trump’s prime adviser earlier than stepping down amid a falling-out.
Within the identify of bettering authorities effectivity, Musk oversaw the gutting of plenty of federal companies, at a price of practically $22bn, in keeping with a congressional investigation carried out by Democratic US Senator Richard Blumenthal in July.