Global Labor Day rallies attended by hundreds of thousands of people angered or worried by the recession turned ugly in a host of affected countries on Friday.
The worst violence was seen in Turkey and across a series of European cities, with Cuba’s traditional red-letter day focused on ending decades of a US trade embargo and Zimbabwe’s prime minister pleading for patience awaiting international donor investment in its shattered economy.
In Germany, on course for its biggest slump since World War II, Berlin police made 49 arrests as young demonstrators hurled missiles and set fire to cars and trash cans in the early hours.
About 150 far-right extremists were also taken into custody after skinheads attacked a trade union rally in the western city of Dortmund, as well as police.
Almost half a million people assembled peacefully across Germany, unions said, but police were bracing for further unrest after dark.
Security forces fired tear gas and water cannon in Istanbul and Ankara, with dozens of police and protesters hurt and over 100 youths landing in cells. Protesters smashed the windows of banks and shops.
Violence was also reported in Greece and the Austrian city of Linz, as Chancellor and Social Democrat leader Werner Faymann told up to 100,000 supporters in Vienna that he would oppose proposals by employers to impose a wage freeze.
In Switzerland, there were more than 80 arrests in Zurich, police said, after protesters threw stones, bottles and firebombs at police who responded with tear gas and water cannon.
Police in Mexico City also clashed with around 200 protesters trying to march on the federal government’s palace — despite a suspension of traditional May Day rallies by the government and unions amid a five-day lockdown triggered by the potentially deadly H1N1 swine flu.
Elsewhere, rallies were mostly peaceful, with organizers everywhere promising to highlight public anger over millions of job losses.
The leaders of France’s eight main unions — presenting a united front for the first time since World War II — linked arms to lead a rally in Paris.
The CGT union claimed 1.2 million took part in 300 marches nationwide, although the police said that only 465,000 had turned out.
The Spanish government expects nearly one in five workers to be out of a job next year, the worst unemployment rate in Europe, and tens of thousands turned out across Spain including over 10,000 in the capital Madrid.
The Archbishop of Seville, Cardinal Carlos Amigo Vallejo, said “job flexibility and precarity” were causing “justified unease.”
Leaders of the main unions in Italy held their rally at the town of L’Aquila in a show of solidarity after a devastating earthquake there last month killed nearly 300 people.
Around 36,000 people rallied in Tokyo’s Yoyogi park, demanding more welfare benefits and others protesting military spending.
In South Korea, some 8,000 workers and students answered the call and there were also rallies in Manila, the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh and Taipei.
Meanwhile in Russia, about 2,000 demonstrators gathered by a statue of Karl Marx in Moscow calling for a return of communism.
But Saint Petersburg, the birthplace of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, saw about 120 far right militants armed with knives and knuckle dusters arrested.
Cuban President Raul Castro, decked out in a tropi-casual guayabera shirt and farmer’s hat, led an estimated 500,000 Cubans called out to march in the Caribbean island’s annual May Day parade.
Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai told about 7,000 people that the unity government cannot meet union demands for higher salaries.
“This government is broke,” Tsvangirai said. “We are only able to pay you allowances. All of us from President [Robert] Mugabe to government workers are earning a hundred dollars.”
Zimbabwe’s Congress of Trade Unions has threatened to strike unless wages are increased radically.
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