Nothing to celebrate on May Day

May 01, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- The last time I went to a gathering of workers at a union hall on May Day, I was saddened. There, instead of feeling the power and might of the working class, I saw workers turning the event into a social, seeking out the free drinks and food that were on offer. Some of the retired workers came too to get on the freeness.

There was a time, long vanished into distant memory, when things were different. The first day of May, May Day or Workers’ Day stirred the heart in the clamorous streets of St. Petersburg, in the cobblestone squares of Chicago, on the factory floors of Manchester and the waterfront and sugar fields of Demerara.

May Day, then, bore the promise of redemptive rage, of workers shaking off their chains and standing upright in the dignity of labour. It was a day when solidarity was not a roaring demand.

But in Guyana, as in much of the world today, the red banner flaps not with conviction, but with parody. The first of May no longer reflects the liveliness of the working class. It has become a requiem, a shallow ritual that mourns the ghost of a movement too proud to admit it has died.

Trade unionism in Guyana, that once-potent force, now totters like an old man clutching a rusted placard, shouting into a void he helped to create. There is no longer even the pretence of unity. The fragmentation of the labour movement—along the familiar and ever-poisonous lines of political affiliation—has long drained the well of power. In place of the old slogans of struggle and emancipation, one hears partisan sniping and union presidents reciting the talking points of their preferred political overlords.

The once-sacred compact between worker and union has been replaced by a farcical brokerage system, where the union leader functions as an agent not of the proletariat, but of political patrons, serving for favours, not for the faithful. What little remains of collective power is bartered by men who bear little of the grime of labour on their hands, only the scent of access and entitlement.

Neo-liberalism came, as it always does, disguised in the costume of reform and opportunity. Its apostles spoke of efficiency and market discipline, and they gutted the labour movement with surgical precision. The free market, we were told, would lift all boats; instead, it sank the trade unions beneath waves of privatization, contract labour, and deregulation. Guyana’s unions, rather than resisting this tide, too often rolled over, exchanging militancy for consultative quietude. In the great theatre of global capital, they became chorus members in someone else’s tragedy.

Perhaps the most grievous wound, however, has been self-inflicted. The leadership of too many unions, in Guyana and elsewhere, came under the control of the comfortable class. Middle-class functionaries now speak in the name of workers. On the podium, they deliver speeches about the “dignity of labour” without the faintest idea of what indignity smells like in a crowded minibus or on an 18-hour shift.

To speak of renewal in the trade union movement is now to risk laughter. These institutions have ossified. Leadership is often not a term of service but a tenure for life. Many unions resemble gerontocracies, fossilized in both ideology and personnel. The young—those who will inherit this society, whether we like it or not—are alienated from the movement. They see no relevance, no place for their aspirations or energy. And rightly so. Why would one enlist in a crusade led by men who have not relinquished the microphone in forty years?

Trade union unity is rumoured to exist, but impossible to find. With its disappearance has gone working-class solidarity. Today’s worker is atomized, isolated, commodified— in a gig economy where labour laws are optional and benefits are a rumour. Even those who work in the formal sector find themselves adrift, their interests not defended, their dignity not respected.

The traditional working-class parties, in Guyana as in much of the post-colonial world, have been hollowed out by the very forces they once pledged to resist. The People’s Progressive Party (PPP), born of working-class dreams, now walks hand-in-hand with the extractive giants and neo-liberal financiers. Ever since it succumbed to structural adjustment, the People’s National Congress (PNC) no longer speaks the language of socialism and workers’ power.

May Day, then, is no celebration. It is a pantomime performed for cameras and dignitaries who once saw the workers as comrades and now view them as variables in an economic spreadsheet. The marching bands still play. The tired speeches are still given. But no one listens. And why should they? There is nothing left to hear but echoes.

To be clear, this is not a eulogy for labour itself. The working class has not died. It continues, suffering and producing, waiting for a moment of relevance. What has perished—or at least entered its twilight—is the machinery of its organization. The labour movement, as it currently stands, cannot reclaim power because it no longer remembers what power looks like when it is wielded by the many and not hoarded by the few.

If May Day is to mean anything again, it must first confront the dishonesty of its modern incarnation. It must reject the celebratory lie and embrace the uncomfortable truth: that the working class stands alone, and the institutions built to defend it now serve other gods. Until that reckoning arrives, let us call the day what it is: not a festival of solidarity, but a funeral procession for a dream betrayed.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.) 

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