Labor organizers and pro-democracy groups are mobilizing for May Day Strong, a coordinated day of action scheduled for May 1 that aims to halt normal economic activity across the country. Protesters are being asked to skip work, avoid school and refrain from shopping, a tactic that drew millions to Minneapolis in January.
The coalition expects over 3,500 actions nationwide, from street marches to workplace walkouts. The organizers framed their push as bridging two movements: defending democracy while addressing the material struggles workers face daily.
"The labor movement in our country cannot advance while ignoring the assault on democracy," said Neidi Dominguez, founding executive director of Organized Power in Numbers and a key voice within May Day Strong. "And the pro-democracy movement can't ask working people to defend abstract principles while they can't afford housing, paying bills or accessing healthcare."
The coalition brings together an unusual alliance: major unions, chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America, groups like Indivisible focused on resisting Trump administration policies, and organizations centered on racial justice, immigrant rights, and reproductive justice. Their messaging centers on "workers over billionaires, taxing the rich, demanding ICE out, money for people not wars, and expanding democracy."
Chicago Teachers Union successfully secured designation of May 1 as a "day of civic action" in their city, while the National Education Association has published organizing guides online. Since 2024, May Day Strong organizers have run Solidarity School training sessions and distributed toolkits to help groups set up local events.
Not Yet a General Strike
Despite the ambition, organizers are clear this is not a general strike. Eric Blanc, assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, noted that a true general strike requires work stoppages that paralyze multiple major industries, a feat that requires years of groundwork.
The Taft-Hartley Act of 1946 effectively banned general strikes in the US and restricted solidarity actions between workers. The nation has not experienced a true general strike since. In contrast, other democracies regularly deploy the tactic: "Experience across the world suggests that it may take such an action to reverse authoritarianism in the US," Blanc said.
However, the labor movement has set its sights on 2028. The United Auto Workers, under president Shawn Fain, called last year for unions across industries to align contract expiration dates to May 1, 2028. If hundreds of thousands or millions of workers find themselves without active contracts on the same day, no-strike clauses become void, and workers can legally walk out simultaneously. Several major unions, including the Chicago Teachers Union, National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers and American Postal Workers Union, have pledged to participate.
"Without workers, the world stops running," Fain wrote. "A successful general strike is going to take time, mass coordination, and a whole lot of work by the labor movement."
May Day itself carries historical weight in labor organizing. The first American celebration in 1886 saw 300,000 workers march in Chicago, organized by anarchist activists Lucy and Albert Parsons. Today, May 1 is recognized as International Workers' Day in 66 countries and celebrated informally in many others.
The US remains an outlier. Congress designated May 1 as "Loyalty Day" and moved the official American workers' holiday to Labor Day in September, a shift that labor historians trace to Cold War efforts to strip the date of its radical associations. Reclaiming May 1 as a day of action represents both a rejection of that history and preparation for labor's future.
Author James Rodriguez: "May Day Strong shows how labor is trying to thread an impossible needle: mobilizing real disruption while the legal system makes true solidarity strikes nearly impossible. The 2028 play is clever, but it's also a confession that organizing a general strike in America requires working around a century-old law designed to prevent exactly that."
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