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Dear brothers and sisters,

We commemorate this 1st of May, 2015 in a time when workers’ struggles are increasing to secure the right to freedom of association, collective bargaining, and especially, the right to strike which is constantly threatened by the pressure of corporations and some governments who want to eliminate it. This 1st of May we will be exactly one year away from the 130th Anniversary of the start of the huge strike for an eight-hour day among other claims, which resulted in the execution of the Chicago martyrs.

We take this opportunity to pay tribute to the great Eduardo Galeano, who recently left us and who wrote: "It happened in Chicago in 1886. The first of May when the workers’ strike paralyzed Chicago and other cities, the Philadelphia Tribune reported: Labour has been bitten by some sort of universal tarantula and has gone completely crazy. The workers who fought for the eight-hour workday and the right to organise, they were totally crazy."

This 1st of May finds us fighting for the same conquests, always threatened. We continue questioning an accumulation model, based on exclusion and greed; a model that only serves to create more and more violence and inequality. 

This 1st of May we celebrate the success of powerful affiliation campaigns that led to the creation of new unions, and the strengthening of others across the continent, enabling us to achieve new conquests and to improve employment conditions of thousands of workers, through the signing of collective agreements.

We celebrate that the voice of working women is becoming increasingly powerful, to demand greater inclusion in all areas (labour, social, political, unions) and mainly to fight against the deplorable pay gap and against all forms violence.

 We celebrate the workers’ spirit of struggle in the Region, those who have joined voices from north to south in our continent to demand more justice and inclusion. We celebrate our everyday heroes, those who against all odds continue to defend the human right to join a union and collectively claim other rights. We stand by each and every one of the struggles for greater justice and better working conditions. 

Finally, we call on all workers across the Continent to join side by side against any attempt, from whatever source, to destabilize democratic governments in the Americas.

Long live May 1st for all men and women workers!