Cover photo: During World War I, “acoustic locators” were employed to sit on open fields and detect enemy aircraft with giant listening horns. The profession became obsolete in the wake of modern radar technologies. CC Great War Observer
After four decades of relentless neo-liberal restructuring, technological disruptions, and demographic pressures of aging societies, the once mighty movement of organized labor has gone from one defensive victory to another, leading many to doubt if these were more than Pyrrhic victories after all.
Public services and welfare programs have decayed across Europe, and wage increases have struggled to offset inflation. Unionization rates have halved across major economies since the Reagan-Thatcher era, while the class of industrial and agricultural “mass workers” has morphed toward a mosaic of rental laborers, gig workers, independent contractors, algorithm-controlled franchisers, and other “non-standard” employees. As the non-standard is becoming the new standard, some have asked if workers or the working class even exist anymore.
Yet, May Day once again reminded us that organized labor remains one of the most influential non-state actors on the global arena. From Manila to São Paulo, and from Berlin and Mexico City, millions took the streets as one—and not only for a better wage. While the specter of war haunted this year’s rallies—reflecting the increasingly aggressive posture of global powers—the labor movement once again demonstrated its unique social breadth and global outreach. By gathering causes as diverse as environmental justice, anti-militarism, gender equality, and the fight against AI-driven inequality under its red banners, it proved it has the potential to be a defining force in these arenas, provided it is able and willing to reclaim its historical mantle.
Yet, as the grand philosopher of modern labor Karl Marx once wrote, humans do not write history as they please: “They do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.“
When the modern labor movement was born, it confronted a deprived social reality far beyond the physical work place. The movement set up popular schools and libraries to eradicate illiteracy, and fought against alcoholism and domestic violence in proletarian neighborhoods. It organized cooperative housing projects to tackle homelessness, and turned ancient folk traditions into modern popular culture through cultural clubs, literature, and arts. The movement campaigned for universal suffrage and child- and healthcare to subvert gender relations, and confronted national chauvinism with its posture of workerist internationalism. It rallied large components of society to its diverse, socially emancipatory programs—programs that shaped society to its core even when they fell short of a full-blown socialist revolution.
Today, the more mature labor movement faces a decaying welfare infrastructure and unrelenting efforts to reverse its past achievements. The movement is credited with securing safeguards that have come to feel almost invisible—minimum wages, the end of child labor, the eight-hour workday, and other social security and welfare nets that millions rely on. These hard‑won, widely celebrated gains now sit on uncertain ground, and are kept alive by the tireless, often invisible struggles of labor organizations.
Amid a European-wide cost of living crisis, employment status remains the single defining factor for material and social deprivation, with poverty risk jumping from 10.9% for employed people to a staggering 66.3% for jobless individuals. In short, the struggle for employment and welfare is real amid disruptive technological innovations, an abrupt swing of investments to war industries, and the pressing need to rapidly dismantle fossil capital.
In May Day’s spirit, this month’s theme is dedicated to the evolving landscape of labor in the 21st century. What are the contemporary circumstances weighing like nightmares “on the brain of living” that push modern workers to struggle for a bare employment and survival? And what could be the contemporary programs and visions with which the labor movement may again reclaim the initiative far beyond factory floors?
The opening article is a dive inside the healthcare system of China, where humanoid robots and large language models are rapidly infiltrating the sector, pioneering a shift that may restructure care work on a global scale. While the AI adoption discourse has centered on labor replacement, nurses at the front lines of “AI-driven care” testify how the new technologies have not removed their labor. Rather, the AI-powered “assistants” have added a new layer to it, overwhelming caregivers with new managerial and technical tasks:
“The future of elderly care is not simply robots caring for humans, but humans reorganizing themselves around caring for robots. Care workers now troubleshoot failures, interpret alerts, and translate robotic instructions into human reassurance.”
Later in May, we will explore the impacts of the US-Israeli war on the Iranian working masses—a population squeezed between foreign missiles, runaway hyper-inflation, and a hardening nationalist, pro-regime sentiment at home. While American and Iranian governments are negotiating a “peaceful” return to the pre-war status quo, Iranian workers remain trapped in a life-endangering crisis, coming only months after economic hardships provoked a widespread rebellion that shook the regime to its core.
Finally, we ask ourselves and our readers: what would a rejuvenated labor movement look like at the waning phase of the neoliberal order that has dominated the globe over past decades? What are its core achievements to defend, and what are the new frontiers of labor battles? How could organized labor reach its full potential as a global force against the ongoing double crisis of climate change and militarism, paving the way toward dignified peace and socially just ecological transition?
History weighs heavily upon us, but it also provides the tools for liberation. The articles in this issue converge on a single point: the worker not only lives, but struggles—for survival, for identity, for safety, and for a brighter tomorrow. The “mosaic of precariousness” we see today is not a sign of labor’s disappearance, but of its fragmentation—a puzzle waiting for common rallying points to bind it together once more as a global force for emancipation.
