May Day 2014 round up

Thousands of workers who took to Sydney streets for May Day want the NSW premier to back away from privatising the state's $30 billion electricity infrastructure.

There were many messages the May Day marchers, numbering around 7,000, wanted the NSW government to hear but the loudest was a warning to new premier Mike Baird to: "Stop the NSW power sell off".

Paul Lester from the Electrical Trade Union (ETU) was among those who gathered outside parliament house on Sunday in a show of solidarity.

As the unionists marched their way through Sydney, with bagpipes blaring, Mr Lester's war cry was insistent:

"Mike Baird is his name 
Privatisation is his game
We all know what you're about, 
Come next May we will throw you out."

Mr Lester said the march had garnered the best turnout the union movement has seen in years.

"We want to show Mr Baird that no, we do not want power privatisation," he told AAP.

Among the other issues highlighted at the march were the recent watering down of workers' compensation and the push to privatise TAFE.

May Day march in Canberra

The president of the Queensland Council of Unions, John Battams, said if the minimum wage was cut from $16 to $12 an hour, it “would result in a huge pool of working poor”, as in the United States.

“About one-and-a-half million Australians depend on the minimum wage to actually make ends meet,” Battams said.

The Labor party leader in Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk, said the 25,000-strong demonstrations in the state sent a strong message to the government. “We can sense the winds of change. People are not happy with this government,” she said.

In Brisbane, many of the protesters’ placards criticised the premier, Campbell Newman, who has made deep cuts to the public service.

Most of the approximately 5,000 marchers in Melbourne were expressing their fears about the future of their pay and work because of the federal government's proposed changes, the city's May Day committee organiser, Len Cooper, said.

“People are pretty edgy about the future of pay, conditions, social conditions, work conditions. Everything is up in the air in their minds,” Cooper said.

Protesters also spoke out about the treatment of refugees, changes to Victorian laws concerning protest rights and the dangers of free-trade deals.

The Australia wide marches commemorate the events of May 4, 1886 when trade unionists calling for the eight-hour day in Chicago came under fire, with four demonstrators killed.