Trade unions, environmental groups, and left-wing parties are preparing to rally and march in central Durham on May 1st, 2024 to celebrate International Workers Day [1]. The May Day rally is being organized by Durham Workers Assembly, United for a Fair Economy, Raising Wages NC, UE Local 150, and other groups.
The rest of the world celebrates May 1st as a worker’s holiday. The day was chosen to honor of the victims of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, where four demonstrators were killed by police during a rally for an eight-hour work day. In the US, May 1st is designated as Law Day.
“Attacks on workers’ standard of living and working conditions have intensified. During the COVID-19 pandemic, employers made record profits at our collective expense,” the organizers of the May Day wrote in a statement, “Our labor continues to be stolen and used to fund increasingly brutal police and military forces across the planet, all while the costs of living climbs higher and higher.”
Haymarket Massacre in Chicago. Image credit: Illinois Labor History Society
The May Day rally and march will put forward four demands and themes:
1. Local minimum wage of $25 per hour for all workers, particularly for city workers.
Only the state government can raise the overall minimum wage, while the City Council controls the pay of city workers. These bodies are only likely to act if trade unions press for better pay and conditions.
2. Measures to make housing more affordable.
The traditional methods for creating affordable housing are rent control and construction of public housing. In North Carolina, rent control is illegal under GS 42‑14.1 [2]. It is unclear whether it is legal for a city in North Carolina to undertake a large-scale campaign to build public housing, aside from the question of cost [3].
3. Payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) from Duke University.
The university owns at least $1.7 billion of property but pays only $3.7 million in property taxes, since most of their properties are tax exempt [4 , 5]. However, universities across the US such as Yale and UPenn make voluntary PILOTs worth tens of millions of dollars per year [6, 7].
4. Support for the Palestinian people with a call for a ceasefire in Gaza and divestment from Israel, as well as a demand to reallocate military funds to social needs.
In February 2024, Durham’s City Council passed a resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza by a vote of 5-2, with Mayor Pro Tem Mark Antony-Middleton and Mayor Leonardo Williams voting against.
During the City Council debate, Mayor Williams said that “ignorance is not always intentional, so I ask for your grace” before voting against the resolution [8, 5:45:47]. The other vote against the resolution was Mayor Pro Tem Middleton, who commented during the debate that in 2023 he’d been on a trip to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Knesset [8, 5:24:03].
Ceasefire event at Durham City Council. Image credit: Leslie St. Dre / IndyWeek
The May Day event hopes to help change a grim status quo for workers in North Carolina. According to Oxfam America, the state holds the 2023 title for “worst state to work in” and “last place position in the Working Women index”. The low ranking is based on North Carolina's $7.25 minimum wage, lack of paid leave, and “right-to-work” laws that undermine the finances of trade unions (and do not guarantee employment) [9].
North Carolina has a unionization rate of 3.6 percent, slightly lower than the 67 percent rate of Denmark but trouncing the 2.7 percent rate of South Carolina.
The May Day statement said that “the city of Durham has the highest eviction rate in the state.” EvictionLab numbers run out in 2016 when the city had an eviction rate of 5.2 percent per year, ranked sixth out of nine tracked cities [10]. According to DataWorks, Durham’s eviction rate rose to 9.4 percent during the 2016-2020 period [11, pg. 8]. During that time, the eviction rate for Black people was 15.8 percent, triple the rate of any other group. The data show the source of the anguished pleas to alleviate “gentrification” heard every election cycle in Durham.
2020 photo of Lutrenda Sumpter, who has dealt with multiple Durham Housing Authority eviction filings. Image credit: Maydha Devarajan / Durham Voice
A mini awakening of Durham’s working class will be on display at the May 1st event. Old unions are stronger and new unions have appeared. The groups that will march from CCB Plaza include “Durham city workers (UE Local 150), school workers (Durham Association of Educators), Duke graduate workers (DGSU), Starbucks workers (SBWU), Amazon workers (CAUSE), REI workers (UFCW), Waffle House workers (USSW)”.
In August 2023, graduate workers at Duke University won their NLRB election by an astonishing vote of 1000-131. That victory turned the DGSU into the largest union of graduate workers at a private university in the South [12].
Image credit: DGSU / The Nation
In a lesser-known development from 2023, the Starbucks on Fayetteville Road voted 16-2 to unionize with SBWU, joining a wave of 420 stores across the US [13]. Recently, the store’s workers called for community help when managers cut the hours of pro-union baristas to as low as four hours per pay period.
The May Day march and rally has been endorsed by dozens of groups including 7 Directions of Service, Black Workers for Justice, NC Environmental Justice Network, and Jubilee Baptist Church. The organizers have encouraged community members and groups to RSVP and endorse the May 1st event with this form. People looking to keep track of updates should follow the social media accounts of Durham Workers Assembly.
Work Cited
1. May Day 2024 - Durham Endorsement and Interest Form. actionnetwork.org/forms/may-day-2024-durham-endorsement-interest-form.
2. “GS 42‑14.1. Rent Control.” NC Legislature, www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/PDF/BySection/Chapter_42/GS_42-14.1.pdf. Accessed 20 Apr. 2024.
3. Bluestein, Frayda. “Is North Carolina a Dillon’s Rule State? - Coates’ Canons NC Local Government Law.” Coates’ Canons NC Local Government Law, 18 Oct. 2021, canons.sog.unc.edu/2012/10/is-north-carolina-a-dillons-rule-state.
4. Burness, John. “Dismiss Durham'S Idea to Tax Duke'S Dime.” The Chronicle, 15 Apr. 1998, www.dukechronicle.com/article/dismiss-durhams-idea-tax-dukes-dime.
5. Mungai, Mary. Durham City Councilman Proposes Duke Pay “Fair Share” in Property Taxes | the Durham VOICE. 14 Mar. 2024, durhamvoice.org/durham-city-councilman-proposes-duke-pay-fair-share-in-property-taxes.
6. Basler, Cassandra. “Yale Announces ‘Historic’ $135 Million Payment to New Haven.” Connecticut Public, 9 Mar. 2023, www.ctpublic.org/education-news/2021-11-17/yale-announces-historic-135-million-payment-to-new-haven.
7. Stellino, Molly. “Activists Question Whether Wealthy Universities Should Be Exempt From Property Taxes.” The Hechinger Report, 18 Dec. 2020, hechingerreport.org/activists-question-whether-wealthy-universities-should-be-exempt-from-property-taxes.
8. City of Durham NC. “Durham City Council Feb 19 2024.” YouTube, 20 Feb. 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwgMfJf8bp4.
9. Work in America: The Best and Worst States in 2023. 30 Aug. 2023, www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/best-worst-states-work-us-2023.
10. “Eviction Rankings.” Eviction Lab, evictionlab.org/rankings/#/evictions?r=North%20Carolina&a=0&d=evictionRate&lang=en.
11. DataWorks. Tenant Demographics and Eviction Filings in Durham County. 2023, dataworks-nc.org/wp-content/uploads/Tenant-Demographics-and-Eviction-Filings-in-Durham-County.pdf.
12. Schlemmer, Liz. “Duke University Graduate Students Win Union Election in a Landslide.” WUNC, 22 Aug. 2023, www.wunc.org/news/2023-08-22/duke-university-graduate-students-win-union-election-in-a-landslide.
13. Cranford, Claire. “‘Starbucks Works Because We Work’: Inside the Formation of Durham’s First Starbucks Union.” The Chronicle, 12 Jan. 2024, www.dukechronicle.com/article/2024/01/duke-university-starbucks-durham-union-formation.