May Day. Mayday? | Editorial of the Secretary General Klaus Heeger

Dear members, colleagues, friends, and partners of CESI,

May 1 was the International Workers’ Day – May Day.

May Day. Mayday?

My last two editorials focused on the challenges that the crisis in Ukraine means for us: first and foremost a humanitarian disaster; but also inflation, disruptions, shortages, economic instability, social hardships, military insecurity.

Last December, I wrote on possible implications of the recent Covid-Omicron-resurge – additional supply chain disruptions and shortages of essential goods across many industries, further job and financial insecurities for many workers.

And before that, I warned against obstacles on the way towards socially fair and worker-friendly green-digital transitions, and pleaded for the need of a strong public service agenda to be equipped for the next crises – crises which, as we see, keep popping up.

Fighting terrorism, saving the Euro, managing immigration, limiting climate change, containing Covid, facing war. On top: Demographic ageing which burdens welfare states, societies that get increasingly inequal, digitalisation which is stalling, public services that are under-staffed and under-resourced and struggle to cope, labour markets and employment relationships which evolve and change at almost inconceivable speed – sometimes too fast to be regulated by policy makers and social partners.

What will be next? And: Will we manage? Is May Day, this year, ‘Mayday’?

We face challenges on all fronts. Crises and socio-economic transformations overlap each other and accumulate before we can manage them and bring them down one-by-one. While workers´ and citizens´ major interests are at stake, trade unions´ commitments are more important than ever.

In the light of the diverse and complex crises and fundamental evolutions and transformations that we currently witness and experience, it is most central to stick together, to support each other. This is why I stressed in my video message on the occasion of May Day, the International Workers’ Day: “We can face the challenges of our time only in unity and solidarity.”

Because the overarching, transversal challenges that we face do not stop at national boundaries. They are European, if not global. ‘Unity and solidarity’ allow us to face crises; cooperation and support enable us to turn challenges into opportunities; and human interaction gives us courage and optimism – even, or especially, in these difficult times.

Trade unions and cross-border trade union cooperation embodies this: we show and live this unity and solidarity, this cooperation and support, this human interaction every day. So maybe it is not yet ‘Mayday!’ in the end. Maybe it is May Day after all. A day to praise, celebrate and honour work and workers. A day to defend them.

All workers count.