International Workers' Day in the AI Era: Labor's New Battle

On May 1, countries around the world mark International Workers' Day to honor labor rights and the history of the workers' movement. The United States and Canada do not observe this date, holding their own Labor Day in September. But the origins of International Workers' Day trace back to the U.S. on May 1, 1886, when strikes demanding an eight-hour workday erupted and were bloodily suppressed by police.

Today, workers' rights face a different threat: artificial intelligence. In January, Amazon — the second-largest private employer in the U.S. after Walmart — laid off 16,000 workers, the latest round of AI-driven job cuts. In October 2025, The New York Times reported Amazon plans to replace more than half a million jobs with robots.

The U.S. leads the world in AI development, unsurprising for a country deeply tied to harsh capitalism and the view that workers should function like machines. The next logical step is to replace them entirely.

In San Francisco, the global hub of tech and AI, billboards openly encourage businesses to stop hiring humans. A local AI company put up ads reading: “Stop hiring humans,” “The era of AI employees has arrived,” and “AI employees won't complain about work-life balance.” Its CEO defended the campaign as a way to replace jobs people don't want so they can do what they truly love.

In reality, work is often how people make a living. One analyst observed: “The billionaire class is seeking a world without workers, where workers feel surplus and as insecure as possible. They love AI because they don't want to deal with workers demanding to be treated like human beings.”

Job insecurity is a built-in feature of capitalism — workers afraid of losing their jobs are less likely to speak up for their rights. The history of union-busting at Amazon, Starbucks, and Trader Joe's — through firings and threats to cut benefits — shows this. Workplace fear will only grow as “AI employees” with no interest in rights take over jobs.

AI is not just the culmination of a long effort to turn humans into digital work machines; it is the crystallisation of a history of labor oppression. A review in early 2026 listed AI's main problems as its “tendency to produce misinformation, perpetuate bias, and create environmental and data-security risks.”

Despite this, corporate oligarchs are pouring money into AI. On April 29, The New York Times revealed that in the first three months of this year alone, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft spent a combined $130.65 billion on capital expenditure, mostly for AI data centers.

U.S. President Donald Trump supports AI, vowing to “lead the AI race to usher in a new era of human prosperity, economic competitiveness, and national security.” But there is no room for human prosperity in a post-human world. On this International Workers' Day, as every day, there should be no place for AI.