Because the Labor Day holidays get underneath method, tens of hundreds of protesters have gathered at rallies throughout america to name for stronger employee protections and assault a spread 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, underneath the banner “Staff Over Billionaires.”
Protesters are demanding stronger employee protections, totally funded colleges, healthcare and housing for all, and an finish to company corruption, assaults on marginalised communities, and federal overreach underneath the Trump administration.
In New York, lots of of individuals gathered outdoors 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 residing wage and common healthcare.
‘Subminimum’ wage
Giovanni Uribe, with the restaurant employee advocacy organisation One Truthful Wage, advised 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 so 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 partially 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 achieve the $7.25 minimal – however which advocates say usually leads to wage theft.
Whereas some states have greater minimal wages – New York Metropolis’s at present stands at $16.50 – the determine is commonly far under a residing wage.
Based on the MIT Dwelling Wage Calculator, a single grownup with out kids would wish an hourly wage of almost $33 in NYC to cowl common fundamental bills. Mississippi, which has one of many lowest prices of residing within the nation and has no state minimal wage, has a residing wage of $20.75 – almost 3 times the minimal wage.
Chicago protests goal Nationwide Guard
In downtown Chicago, hundreds turned out to show towards Trump’s promise to focus on Chicago subsequent in a deployment just like these underneath method in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, two different Democrat-run cities.
Mayor Brandon Johnson, talking to 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 via the town, some marchers strolling canines and carrying kids on their shoulders, diners sitting outdoors at native eating places and cafes pumped their fists and automobiles honked in assist.
Protesters mentioned they have been involved by Trump’s menace to ship out the Nationwide Guard and extra brokers from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Filiberto Ramirez, 72, feared violence if extra ICE brokers got here to the town. “Will we really feel there’s gonna be hassle? Sure,” Ramirez mentioned. “I hope no one will get damage.”
Trump has singled out Chicago in current 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 downside,” mentioned Yvonne Spears, 67, “however the Nationwide Guard is meant to struggle for us, not towards us.”
Murder charges within the nation’s third-largest metropolis have plunged in recent times, in accordance with metropolis crime knowledge. And although a 2025 College of Chicago survey reported roughly half of Chicagoans really feel unsafe of their neighbourhoods at evening, 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 seemingly launch a slew of lawsuits difficult a deployment, which authorized consultants mentioned would violate the US Structure and a Nineteenth-century legislation prohibiting the navy from imposing home legal guidelines.
‘Staff Over Billionaires’
Matt Duss, government vice-president on the Middle for Worldwide Coverage and a former adviser to US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, advised Al Jazeera that whereas protesters in several locales could also be attending rallies for a spread of causes, a lot of their monetary considerations are prone to overlap.
“I feel there are a set of shared considerations: the price of residing, the price of housing, the price of fundamental items, groceries, the price of schooling, 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 partially tapped into standard financial frustration, is a billionaire himself and has loaded his administration with billionaires.
Probably the most well-known of them – Elon Musk – served as Trump’s prime adviser earlier than stepping down amid a falling-out.
Within the title of bettering authorities effectivity, Musk oversaw the gutting of quite a few federal businesses, at a value of almost $22bn, in accordance with a congressional investigation carried out by Democratic US Senator Richard Blumenthal in July.