The following report was shared with the Global May Day list:

On this year’s Workers’ Struggle Day, the FAU Stuttgart participated in the rally “#Solidarity – for a solidary togetherness” in Stuttgart East and contributed an online lecture to the May Day festival of the Gasparitsch neighborhood center.

More than 100 people came to the rally at Lukasplatz. Several speeches alternated with the atmospheric musical program of the saxophonist Moni Ramoni and provided for a varied atmosphere.

The speech of the FAU Stuttgart made the connection from the historical origin of May Day as a day of struggle of the workers’ movement for the 8-hour day to the present under the motto “30-hour week for all!”, which means working less but earning the same amount to limit our exploitation by the capitalist class. In times of the Corona pandemic, our working time conditions tightened, according to the speaker of the FAU Stuttgart: “Almost en masse, the bosses jumped at the opportunity to send workers home temporarily. For this, there was money from the employment agency, i.e. from the state. Those of us who were at work during this time often had to work double time. This is class struggle, but this is the class struggle from above, this is the class struggle against us: the bosses make us work harder in less time and get our money stuffed in their mouths through the state. What comes out of it? Correct! Fat profits at the turn of the year – like at Daimler here in Stuttgart, for example. That’s not what we want!”

But he also made it clear that we don’t have to just accept this and that there are alternatives to these methods of the bosses:

“What we have to do together at work is stick together. What we have to do together is to resist the class struggle of the bosses! What we want to achieve is that all of us together, you, me, us here and everyone else from our class finally turn the tables. Let’s attack! We want less work pressure! We want the rich to pay for the crisis! We want to work less! We want full wage compensation! We want full staff compensation! We want more free time and all that for everyone! We workers need militant unions! Organize with us in the FAU, let’s fight side by side, shoulder to shoulder!”

At the information table of the FAU, the numerous interested people could take, among other things, the current May Day newspaper of Direkte Aktion. We had many conversations that day about current labor conflicts of the FAU and how we are active locally as a union. Visitors to our information table took away about 100 protest postcards about the labor conflict at the Bookstore Walther König.

At the end of the rally, we sent solidarity greetings to all struggling workers worldwide under the motto #1world1struggle – global mayday – and thus also made the international reference of May Day clear.

Report in German: stuttgart.fau.org