What’s at stake?
Fresno serves as the frontlines of several battles over labor and immigrant rights as workers challenge Trump administration changes to H-2A wages, commercial drivers licenses and other issues.
Hundreds of Fresno workers and advocates gathered in downtown Fresno on Friday to commemorate May Day as the fight for employees’ rights take on new significance under the second Trump administration.
“This May Day, we are at a historical juncture,” said Ana Padilla, executive director of the UC Merced Community and Labor Center that helped organize Friday’s event. “We’re experiencing the greatest inequality since the Great Depression. Authoritarianism is on the rise here and all around the world for the first time in a century. And we have a federal administration that is trying to gut workers rights and carry out the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history.”
Fresno serves as the frontlines of several of these fights for labor and immigrant rights. Farmworkers, alongside the United Farm Workers union and foundation, are challenging new rules from the Department of Labor cutting H-2A workers’ wages in federal court in Fresno. Locally-based nonprofit Jakara Movement is also leading the legal battle over the Trump administration’s revocation of approximately 20,000 immigrant truck drivers’ commercial licenses in California.
Workers from multiple Central Valley industries drew attention to these and other local concerns at Friday’s event, including farmworkers and educators.
Martha Ocegueda, a farmworker from Madera, emphasized the dire conditions she and other laborers have endured, from dirty employer-provided bathrooms to wage theft.
Paul Gilmore, a member of the State Center Faculty Union Local 1533 which represents 2,300 full-time and part-time faculty at State Center Community College District, said their union continues to get closer and closer to a strike after over a year of bargaining without an agreement.
Viridiana Juarez, a student leader with the organization Immigrant R.O.O.T.S. at UC Merced, highlighted their efforts to open up university jobs to undocumented students in the UC system.
Pastor Mike McKeever with southeast Fresno’s Mennonite Community Church tied the organizers’ struggle to Jesus’ message in Matthew 20, or the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard.
“Jesus’ parable does not ask whether those workers deserve a full wage. It does not ask where they came from or when they arrived. It asked only whether they needed to eat tonight,” he said. “And the answer in God’s economy is always yes.”
Fresno’s commemoration culminated in a march through downtown Fresno to the tune of chants like “Union busting, that’s disgusting,” and “Sí se puede.”
The May Day holiday traces its origins to the violent clash between protesters and police, culminating in a bombing at Haymarket Square in Chicago that took place 140 years ago. The violence erupted as workers protested to demand an eight-hour workday.
