The Nepal Weekly 
May 2, 2023
Workers and activists around the world marked May Day on Monday with rallies calling for higher salaries, reduced working hours and other better working condition.
In France, unions plan massive demonstrations to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s recent move to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. Organizers see the pension reform as a threat to hard-fought worker rights and France’s social safety net.
The pension bill unleashed France’s biggest protests in years, and the May 1 rallies are expected to be among the largest yet.
May Day, which falls on May 1, is observed in many countries as a day to celebrate workers’ rights with rallies, marches and other events. This year’s events had bigger turnouts than in previous years, as COVID-19 restrictions were drastically loosened and opposition centred on how governments’ economic plans will affect workers.
As in previous years, police in Turkey prevented a group of demonstrators from reaching Istanbul’s main square, Taksim, and detained around a dozen protesters, the independent television station Sozcu reported. Journalists trying to film demonstrators being forcibly moved into police vans were also pushed back or detained.
The square has symbolic importance for Turkey’s trade unions after unknown gunmen opened fire on people celebrating May Day at Taksim in 1977, causing a stampede. Dozens were killed. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has declared Taksim off-limits to demonstrations, leading to frequent clashes between police and protesters trying to reach the square.
Meanwhile, small groups were allowed to enter Taksim to lay wreaths at a monument there.
In South Korea, tens of thousands of people attended various rallies in its biggest May Day gatherings since the pandemic began in early 2020. The two main rallies in the capital, Seoul, were expected to draw about 30,000 people each, according to organizers.
“The price of everything has increased except for our wages. Increase our minimum wages!” an activist at a Seoul rally shouted at the podium. “Reduce our working hours!”
A crowd of people packing Seoul’s downtown Gwanghwamun neighbourhood held anti-government placards, sang songs and listened to speeches by union leaders. They later marched through the streets. Seoul police mobilized thousands of officers to maintain order.
Rally participants in South Korea accused the conservative government of President Yoon Suk Yeol of clamping down on some unions in the name of reforming alleged irregularities. Yoon’s government has been calling for labour reform, demanding more transparent accounting records of labour unions and an end to alleged illegal practices by some union members and workers in the construction sector such as pressing firms to hire union members or coercing kickback-like payments from them.
In Tokyo, thousands of labour union members, opposition lawmakers and academics gathered at Yoyogi Park, demanding wage increases to offset the impact of rising costs as their lives are still recovering from the damages of the pandemic.
Union leaders said government measures for salary increases are insufficient and falling behind with rising prices. They criticized Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s plan to double the defence budget, which requires tax increases in coming years, and said the money should be spent on welfare, social security and improving people’s daily lives.
