Over three hundred Ithacans gathered downtown on Thursday, May 1, to celebrate International Workers’ Day. Hosted by the Ithaca Communist Party and Indivisible Tompkins, the rally and march drew a crowd spanning various ages and political affiliations. Ukrainian, Palestinian, and upside down American flags flew high as Ithacans came together to celebrate recent local labor wins and emphasize the importance of local workers’ movements in resisting the Trump administration.
The Ithaca Workers’ Day Celebration—one of over a thousand nationwide—opened with a rallying cry from the emcees and an original performance by the Indivisible Tompkins Art Team. Attendees then marched from the Bernie Milton Pavilion to DeWitt Park for more speeches, music, and mingling with representatives of a variety of worker-affiliated organizations. Tabling organizations included the Green Party Finger Lakes, Ithaca Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Cornell Young DSA, Alliance of Families for Justice, PM Press, Midstate Council on Occupational Safety and Health, and the Ithaca Tenants Union.
Education was a major theme of this year’s Workers’ Day. Speakers from the Ithaca Teachers Association (ITA), Cornell Graduate Students United (CGSU) and American Association of University Professors (AAUP) emphasized the crucial role of education, research, and academic freedom in the face of federal attacks on the Department of Education, suspensions of international student visas, and funding cuts for higher education. Risa Lieberwitz, former president of Cornell AAUP, called for “education at all levels for everyone for democracy.”
Joules Chapin, Social Justice Chair of the ITA and member of the ITA bargaining team, proudly told the crowd about recent contract negotiation wins for local teachers: the right to private lactation spaces, protections against reprisal for teaching controversial subjects, and an end to biweekly Wednesday staff meetings. At the time of writing, however, the ITA is still campaigning for the right to switch off, assurance that they will not be replaced with AI, and a step-and-lane salary system that provides clear expectations for salaries based on experience. The first teachers’ union in New York State to do so, the ITA is using the model of open bargaining and making recordings of all its weekly bargaining sessions accessible online.
Maggie Foster, a teaching assistant in the Cornell Department of Communication and a member of the inaugural CGSU bargaining committee, spoke about CGSU’s recently ratified first contract. The contract establishes some “historic wins for Cornell grads,” as she put it, including twelve weeks of parental leave, clear caps on workload hours, clearly defined scope of work, improved protections for international workers, and union representation at all disciplinary meetings.
Job security was another major theme of this year’s Workers’ Day. Hannah Shvets ’23, representing the Tompkins County Workers’ Center, and Scott Hiley, representing the Ithaca Communist Party, advocated for Just Cause Employment legislation in their speeches. This policy—something that individual unions often bargain for—would ensure that employers couldn’t let workers go without a good reason given in writing and a second chance. This would be enforced by a local workers’ rights commission. “Because we depend on our wages to meet all of our needs, at-will employment gives employers enormous leverage, enormous coercive power over the working class,” Hiley argued. By disallowing “unjust” firings, the City of Ithaca would protect workers from threats, for example, of termination if someone does not work overtime.
Shvets, a Cornell student and Common Council candidate, also argued for the minimum wage in Ithaca and Tompkins County to be raised to 25 dollars an hour, a core component of her campaign platform. “Most people cannot afford to live here for 15.50 dollars an hour,” she argued. “That’s just a ridiculous amount.”
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