Tomorrow is International Workers’ Day. This year, corporations are celebrating by laying off 882 people a day. Tech alone has cut 95,000 jobs in 2026 — Meta starts firing another 8,000 on May 20, Oracle just eliminated 30,000 people to fund $156 billion in AI infrastructure. Not to survive. To accelerate. You were the cost they were looking for an excuse to cut.
The framing is always the same: “toward AI,” “efficiency,” “long-term value creation.” What that means is they found the machine that does your job for less. No benefits. No vacation. No back-talk. And the record profits keep going to the same place they always go. A 58% majority of companies plan layoffs this year. That’s not a cycle. That’s a coordinated class decision.
May Day exists because workers bled for the 40-hour week, the weekend, the right to not be owned by the company store. The fight didn’t end. They just rebranded the opponent. Now it’s called automation. Same war, different PowerPoint.