As the Labor Day holidays get under way, tens of thousands of protesters have gathered at rallies across the United States to call for stronger worker protections and attack a range of policies undertaken by the administration of US President Donald Trump.
More than 1,000 demonstrations are expected on Monday to span all 50 states, under the banner “Workers Over Billionaires.”
Protesters are demanding stronger worker protections, fully funded schools, healthcare and housing for all, and an end to corporate corruption, attacks on marginalised communities, and federal overreach under the Trump administration.
In New York, hundreds of people gathered outside the Trump Tower, chanting for Trump to step down and calling the president a fascist. As a brass band played, workers held up signs demanding a living wage and universal healthcare.
‘Subminimum’ wage
Giovanni Uribe, with the restaurant worker advocacy organisation One Fair Wage, told Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey he had come out to protest against billionaires whittling away the rights of workers.
“Service workers in New York City are the backbone of this city,” he said. “The National Restaurant Association is our number one opponent that’s fighting to keep subminimum wage intact so they don’t have to pay their workers their full minimum wage to survive. So we’re just asking for a livable wage.”
The federally set minimum wage in the US is $7.25 an hour – a figure that has not been raised since 2009 due in part to the successful lobbying of industry groups. Tipped workers, like wait staff, have a federally mandated “subminimum” wage of $2.13, a figure set in 1991 that is legally required to be offset to reach the $7.25 minimum – but which advocates say often results in wage theft.
While some states have higher minimum wages – New York City’s currently stands at $16.50 – the figure is often far below a living wage.
According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a single adult without children would need an hourly wage of nearly $33 in NYC to cover average basic expenses. Mississippi, which has one of the lowest costs of living in the country and has no state minimum wage, has a living wage of $20.75 – nearly three times the minimum wage.
Chicago protests target National Guard
In downtown Chicago, thousands turned out to demonstrate against Trump’s promise to target Chicago next in a deployment similar to those under way in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, two other Democrat-run cities.
Mayor Brandon Johnson, speaking to the crowd, vowed that Chicago would resist federal encroachment.
“This is the city that will defend the country,” he said, receiving loud cheers from protesters waving blue-striped Chicago flags.
As the crowd wove through the city, some marchers walking dogs and carrying children on their shoulders, diners sitting outside at local restaurants and cafes pumped their fists and cars honked in support.
Protesters said they were concerned by Trump’s threat to send out the National Guard and additional agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Filiberto Ramirez, 72, feared violence if additional ICE agents came to the city. “Do we feel there’s gonna be trouble? Yes,” Ramirez said. “I hope nobody gets hurt.”
Trump has singled out Chicago in recent weeks over violent crime, calling the city “a mess”, “a hellhole”, and a “killing field”. But on Monday, Chicagoans at the protest said they did not feel the National Guard was a solution to crime in the city.
“There is a crime problem,” said Yvonne Spears, 67, “but the National Guard is supposed to fight for us, not against us.”
Homicide rates in the nation’s third-largest city have plunged in recent years, according to city crime data. And though a 2025 University of Chicago survey reported roughly half of Chicagoans feel unsafe in their neighbourhoods at night, many protesters said on Monday that they felt largely safe in the city.
City and state leaders have already readied measures to shield Chicago from federal troops and would likely launch a slew of lawsuits challenging a deployment, which legal experts said would violate the US Constitution and a 19th-century law prohibiting the military from enforcing domestic laws.
‘Workers Over Billionaires’
Matt Duss, executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy and a former adviser to US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, told Al Jazeera that while protesters in different locales may be attending rallies for a range of reasons, many of their financial concerns are likely to overlap.
“I think there are a set of shared concerns: the cost of living, the cost of housing, the cost of basic goods, groceries, the cost of education, the overall sense that people in the United States have lost control of their economic and political lives and their futures,” he said.
Trump, a real estate scion who came to power on a platform that in part tapped into popular economic frustration, is a billionaire himself and has loaded his administration with billionaires.
The most famous of them – Elon Musk – served as Trump’s top adviser before stepping down amid a falling-out.
In the name of improving government efficiency, Musk oversaw the gutting of a number of federal agencies, at a cost of nearly $22bn, according to a congressional investigation carried out by Democratic US Senator Richard Blumenthal in July.
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