that comes. from the big apple to bangladesh madrid to moscow people around the world celebrate may day will take you around the world and in the heart of the rallies and putting a stop at occupy wall street. and soaring into debt the u.s. military's f. thirty five fighter jet program is no cheap venture when all is said and done it exceeds the entire g.d.p. of spain but it looks like these planes won't be performing any airstrikes any time soon until workers and their labor strike we'll tell you why workers at lockheed martin are telling the government that they've got to pay to play. plus in the race to cure the global economy each country thinks they have the perfect prescription to get ready for a dose of reality because it seems that neither are sturdy nor and the bailouts are

the best remedy will tell you why. it's tuesday may first five pm in washington d.c. i'm abby martin you're watching our team no work no school no shopping no banking it's may day and today marks the first nationwide strike in u.s. history it's a day to remember and it's been long dormant the u.s. but celebrated internationally since an eight hundred eighty nine now the occupy wall street movement has resurrected the workers holiday calling the day without the ninety nine percent. but made it actually originated here in america and the one thousand century unregulated capitalism ran amok workers are being paid very little and working ten to twelve hour days a national for decades tens of thousands of workers took to the streets in protest to demand an eight hour workday employees ignored the call resulted in the

haymarket riot in chicago on may first one thousand nine hundred six well things turned ugly people were shot a policeman was bombed by alleged anarchists and the movement was stalled in the u.s. but it's been taken out internationally ever since over the last century lawmakers of trying to co-opt the holiday multiple times here at home first calling it americanization day loyalty day and even law day but in an attempt to appease workers and distance themselves from the radical roots of the holiday the government declared september fourth as labor day instead needless to say the true origins of may day were long forgotten until now today there is a historic occupy general strike and over one hundred thirty five u.s. cities most of the protests so far been peaceful but we've been monitoring twitter reports say that oakland police have used tear gas on demonstrators after an officer was hit by a paint ball but that's not the case in new york where one of the largest protests is happening today workers students immigrants and employed are all standing together for economic justice and mate is happening globally and france thousands

took to the streets demanding economic liberation workers there are upset over policies many feel are strangling any hopes of economic recovery and this is the scene in indonesia some one hundred sixty one thousand people took part in events across the country but let's begin our coverage tonight with honest going to reports from new york. ana stasia what is going on actually in new york city by occupy wall street and already a major street was blocked off all of this traffic right here waiting to get through but they are happy about two hundred and fifty people blocking the street right now and you can only imagine how much bigger this is going to get considering the fact that tens of thousands of people are expected to join along with unions later on throughout the day challenging corporate person challenging the big three hundred ninety nine. city like if i was shut out.

of the city i think it's really great to get everyone together in one place and see the potential that we as individual humans can have to create new systems by just coming together and making things happen with office workers looking down on them this. has to say the company and site. immigrant workers one of the major issues of may day have taken place hundreds are right. where one of them. are everywhere getting ready and if we do remember of course that ever since occupy wall street party in september of last year as many as twenty one hundred people have so far already been arrested the big it's going to remain peaceful to. this main action yes but there's supposedly other groups around the city that maybe not so much this

is the latest attempt by occupy wall street to bring attention to the issues that. they're saying. it against the one they believe. the system. except. right now we're seeing the crowds walking through the avenue if not shutting. down we're seeing all these trends here and. the market's going to continue all the way down fifth avenue in hopes that it will make trucks more attention to the people walking by because we know of course that many of the tourists who come to new york city are going to be on their having these people who are staying there on to the ritz to occupy their city and their house the crowds are chanting a lot of e-mails that we've got sold out here after the show not been a lot there's been no real accountability street and among bankers in the united states that people are out on the streets of the crowds to express their outrage

when occupy wall street first started prayers were saying it will go away quickly but these demonstrators here today believe that this is the second stage of the biggest protest america has seen in years and they're saying those critics were saying that they would become a thing of the past very quickly saying this is proof that these people represent the working americans of the presidents and they will be the ones who end up making up is not determining america's future as they see it r t v or. you know talk more about the made events and occupy rally in new york i'm joined now by our team is honest. what is going on there on the ground. well abbie the events of the day are definitely unraveling very quickly this morning when the action started at eight am a lot of critics who are skeptics were really saying that this movement today is not going to build any momentum there were expecting that tens of thousands would come out onto the streets and it was just doesn't start but

throughout the hours that we spent on the ground today the crowds definitely kept growing and growing and right now the majority of the people participating in the events of the day in new york city are gathered at union square thousands of people the square is completely packed hundreds of police everywhere there was a helicopter going around over union square and some people who were there witnessing that said it was literally a ball of the crowd so really an intense police presence and we are expecting an even bigger march to take place later on today in a couple of hours so we'll be sure to be back down there once we finish talking to you and make sure to bring our viewers all the latest when it comes to the biggest march of the day is still yet to come it's great to hear there's more actions to come and i'm glad you'll be covering it what a read if any arrests that happen do you know of any and the police brutality that has happened on the ground so far. well abbie you know definitely right now the

situation is quite calm we have heard here and there pick people mention that one or two people got arrested we're not sure about the details of what went on we do know that the majority of occupiers intend to keep the events peaceful today but as we know with occupy wall street you never know the police have been quite brutal at times before of course the the tourists now rests on the brooklyn bridge where over seven hundred people were arrested nobody really expected that many arrests that day so we're going to have to wait and see what happens with that but that's new york city we know that in oakland for example of events are going in a much harsher way we did hear reports that tear gas has been fired at occupiers we will have to wait and see how events in new york develop again this bigger march expected to take place later on could make a little more arrests happen we'll see what we'll wait and see in light of the federalist crackdowns and the brutal military action militarized police action that

we saw on occupy camps nationwide early on a lot of people have said the occupy wall street movement was passe in and pretty much over do you disagree with that and you see today as marking the reemergence of occupy. well abbie i think determining that will depend on what happens later today and then in the days after you know of course when occupy wall street started last year in september people were saying no way is it going to last until december no way is it going to last even a month and of course that has been far from the from reality we did see a sort of pause in the occupy wall street protest because of winter time because after the or vixen from zuccotti park they had a very hard time trying to find a new camp and the authorities were very strict about letting them occupy other locations but with this action taking place not just in new york but throughout the united states it definitely looks like if not permanent but definitely a big comeback for occupy wall street whether or not it remains and the people

stick to staying out on the streets and continuing bringing their message across we're going to have to wait and see but that definitely seems to be the mood today a lot of people on the ground did tell us that they think this is the new stronger bigger stage of occupy wall street that's great to hear in oakland you know yes we did hear the police were using tear gas and baton protesters very early on in the day so we'll definitely stay tuned with that do you hear any reports of the black bloc being out there the alleged anarchists the go out and kind of disrupt these protests that we see time and time again have you seen any presence of them and also tell us a little bit about what planned for later in the day after the big march. well abbie in terms of the anarchists i personally have not seen that we have not witnessed it with our own eyes we also have not heard reports of this so we're going to have to wait of see and see if they do resurface and whether people end up witnessing what ends up taking place in terms of the bigger events this is an old

day action plan we know that occupy wall street protesters will be in the news in the streets of new york city throughout the rest of the day and what can happen after the big march where we're going to have to wait and see again because that is the biggest event from the of the day they will be marching down to wall street and of course because this is an occupy wall street movement they're going to get closer again to the cloudy part to wall street to where the bankers are based to really the core of what the anger of these people is about so how events unravels there that's i'm sure some of the protesters don't even know they're heading down there and we're going to have to wait and see what takes place we know we'll be bringing our viewers everything that happens the minute it takes it takes place where we definitely will be watching and waiting to see what unfolds on the ground it was r t correspond. from new york cuts cuts and more cuts in the u.k. david cameron has tackled the economic crisis by making drastic government cuts

across the board his austerity measures are set to cut one fifth of all public spending by two thousand and fifteen or giving tax breaks to the wealthiest citizens in the u.k. but the prime minister's so-called debt reduction and austerity plan has backfired the unemployment rate has now surpassed that of the u.s. and the economic recovery is the slowest in it's history here in the u.s. the g.o.p. is pushing implement similar austerity measures in order to ease the economic recession. but is this the solution to our economic problems or will the u.s. fall victim to similar fate earlier i spoke to ben cohen editor of the daily banter and president of banter media group and i asked him if tax breaks really work when given to the wealthy here's his take by the evidence shows that he doesn't particularly the time of recession you need to have a lot of consumer confidence in the economy and when you have tax breaks for the wealthy if nobody's buying anything then it doesn't really make any difference which people are just going to hold on to their wealth so i think that's what you're seeing in the u.k. and hope for the what we're not going to see in the u.s.

and you know the wealthiest are sitting on the wealthiest businesses are sitting on two trillion dollars right now across the globe and of course the poor are going to buy anything when they feel like their debt is going to skyrocket so why is it that the you hate this as implemented these stringent austerity measures. i think you have to look at who's in power what kind of social background the politicians are in power to david cameron is a very wealthy country extremely wealthy family. i know i went to school with a lot of people who look and sound a lot like david cameron and i were kind of families they come from the stream the wealthy and they have a very ideological belief that people like themselves should run and know how to run the economy and they're usually people in business you people have very strong ties the banking and they follow economic policies that work really in their own interests and at the moment or so it's measures are clearly working in the interests of the rich you're seeing wealth divide increase significantly you are

seeing as you pointed out the businesses worldwide are sitting on two trillion dollars of cash and they're not spending it ok this is an unprecedented division between the haves and the have nots so i think it's clearly. kind of symptomatic of what kind of people we have in power so obviously the wealthiest shouldn't be the ones deciding on how the economy should be solved i mean they're completely out of touch with the working class and really the problems of the underlying problems of why the economy is the way it is so as karen states you know this is just all due to a weak global economy is it deeper rooted than that he's kind of you know blaming the problems on just the global market right now i mean i think of course the economy the global economy is extremely interconnected so there is a knock on effect happening from from around the world but. you know the stimulus has it has worked in america u.s.

economy is not growing particularly quickly but it is growing in and you you can kind of contrast that with what's happening in europe where they've reacted different economic measures they've been out to the stairs he measures and you've got economies are contracting you know the u.k. we had a double dip recession in the u k. spain greece i mean these countries are facing severe economic hardship and they would not see those thirty measures and that's coming from the governments that governments are not seeing these austerity measures so the government does have a certain amount of control of the economy does make a difference. and why is the u.s. trying to emulate this failed not i mean we have the g.o.p. we have romney pushing for the ryan plan that will kind of similarly push and implement these harsh austerity measures and we have even ron paul the popular tarion candidate or libertarian as a candidate who's pushing his one trillion dollar plan that would cut one trillion dollars within the first year of him being in office why are we trying to emulate

a failed model that's proven not to work. i mean my personal opinion is that you because it works in their own interest to have people who pay for the republicans to get into power the banks insurance industry they benefit from from when the government cuts spending cuts well first bending. the rich are not particularly concerned about welfare issues about who goes to say they'd like government resources to be able to bail them out when they need it but when government is spending money on the poor and middle classes that's a big problem so they're not ideologically opposed to the bailouts and welfare they're just opposed to bailing out people who actually need the money and let's talk about bailouts a little bit do you know we see greece being bailed out and spain is close behind i mean will this work to discontinuous the bailout whole country's first us corporations now the country is i mean where is this and where's the money coming from it's based on a system of debt i mean how can this how can we turn this around i thought i can't

really see a way out of the european crisis is very very severe and if we keep continuing the policies of which is lending money you know the governments are obsessed in europe with being able to borrow money at low interest rates so they're cutting public spending in order to boost their credit rating but if you don't have investment for growth for a strategy of growth it doesn't really mean anything you just kind of cuts cutting sake and debt increases i mean the greek economy i believe is predicted to contract by five percent this year and this is after not seeing one of the most severe was thirty programs in history of greece i mean you've got the i.m.f. is even now saying that this is not working the. poor thompson who was one of the architects for the austerity measures in europe he's come out and said this in is not working so looks i don't understand how they're going to get themselves out

there were less there is a complete shift in direction then we start to lower. did we start to lend money to banks not to lend money to these countries are lower interest rates and they can have some sort of plan for growth right and greece is asking for i mean we already know that we need more money for greece it's the initial bailout wasn't enough i mean how far is this going to go and it's all the expense of the taxpayers of these countries and let's take it back to america really quickly you mentioned that you know the surplus or of the stimulus worked people always like to tell clinton as this you know he caused this huge economic boom and everything was great but it was really based on unsustainable bubbles the housing bubble the stock market bubble so what is the answer i mean we have the g.o.p.'s push the g.o.p. pushing austerity measures but what is the answer really that we can implement here at home to really turn this around at home we need to have. again we need we probably need another stimulus in america there needs to be another injection of

money into the economy the most effective way of doing that is through public spending is through infrastructure spending we know that. over and over and over again we've seen how into world war two that was a classic example of cajun economics of the government stepping in and boosting production that happens to be for a war but it pulled the u.s. economy out of recession out of the depression really so we know the answer to how how you can see how you can pull a country of recession and it's through public sector spending that was ben cohen editor of the daily banter and president of the banter media group. is the supply chain of manufacturing gone for good in the u.s. turns out that low wages are not the only attraction for companies to produce goods overseas. take apple for example a team of researchers recently took apart a five hundred dollar i pad to see how much money it actually takes to make and assemble they found the product contain one hundred fifty four dollars worth of materials from multiple countries the labor costs worldwide for the i pad told

thirty three dollars with only a mere eight dollars for china's share of the labor costs so with such a small amount of money going to pay for chinese assembly why does an apple just make the i pads in the us because it's not just about wages and more china represents a successful industrial cluster that continues to give it its competitive edge the closer is part of network of firms skills experience and production knowledge as long as they maintain their edge the production will not come back to the u.s. or europe even though wages factor in their becoming less and less important and as the costs of rise are labor rises this is will continue to chase the market across the globe but doesn't look to like they've been chasing it back home any time soon in light of the plummeting economy and skyrocketing unemployment there is one government sector that continues to grow unabated defense military spending has more than doubled since nine eleven and it's a topic conspicuously absent from political discourse. lockheed martin the world's

largest defense contractor saw twenty six percent increase in profits in the first quarter of two thousand and twelve alone their f. thirty five fighter jet program is also the pentagon's most expensive weapon system and the cost of fighter jets that the u.s. is expected to buy will exceed the entire g.d.p. of spain as the world takes to the streets to strike from a day this is the second week that almost four thousand workers at lockheed have been on strike so is this a sign of what's to come and what will it mean for the american military if it cannot build up its precious program labor journalist mike elk joins me now for more hi mike so what are these people striking about well it's a couple things i mean one the big issue here is they want to take away defined pensions in a slow bleed kind of strategy and the way they want to do it is they want workers to be moved into kind of a hybrid for one k. defined pension plan for new hires and what this would do in this kind of situation

is actually actually they want to eliminate all for new hires in this situation think of another pensions for the vince somebody in the u.s. they want to eliminate the fine pensions for all new hires and the workers i talked to down there in texas and fort worth said that by eliminating it over the short run right for new hires they would eventually hurt the solidarity of the new hires to place a pension a tax on the current employees so that's one of the reason the reason is the increase in the deductible dramatically for union workers they've already implemented the health care deductible for nonunion workers in at this lockheed facility and for example one worker who's a non union worker had a baby and had to pay one hundred fifty dollars under the old plan that you knew you were going to come in under but under the new plan they had to pay six thousand dollars so this is really the issues as well as other things like bad faith the bargaining attempting to cut side deals doing a number of illegal types of bargain so are we seeing mostly new workers taking it and striking right now or is it all workers join solidarity like you said they're

worried about the size. already the new workers with them for the union to receive post both all across the board going out and taking it well yeah i mean you had an over ninety percent strike here so you see majority out although it should this is really a rarity in the u.s. to have thirty six hundred workers in texas striking and part of the reason they're able to strike is they make airplanes and their planes fall out of the sky so they require a certain level so the skill and sophistication of these employees so they can be easier policed as most workers you know if you're working at it can factor something like that so that's why they're able to go out on trade because of the skill you know as you know u.s. labor law allows doing strikes workers to be permanently replaced so these workers can't be perm the replaced because of their skill so they're out on strike and you know with the f. thirty five program being under a lot of congressional oversight because some of this cost overruns they really have a real kind of unique leverage situation with a company it is interesting to see skyrocketing profits for lockheed martin just

exponentially growing we see a twenty six percent increase in the fold of their profits just in the first quarter this year and yet they're cutting benefits time and time again for workers what are the strikers hoping to accomplish with the strike you know i think they're trying to say no no more concessions with the strike as well as demand solidarity because i mean they might not win in the end but in order to have a union in a state like texas it's not terribly union friendly you have to show that you can fight for something so that's certainly what they're trying to do in this situation here has lockheed started negotiations with them as anything on the table right now i mean my understanding is not lockheed is is talking to some of the workers i'm not sure when the last one was held but workers certainly hoping to make a deal can lock you to operate with this many people on strike and for how long well i don't know about its nationals facilities but they can't really operate this facility that makes that thirty five or thirty six hundred people well they've had some management guys in there but these are you know i've i've done a lot of work on airplane manufacturing airplanes are basically made by hand

they're not really made on assembly lines and so i think really skilled workers that really makes a big difference. but the f. thirty five program you know it's it equates the entire g.d.p. of spain it's cost way more than we ever thought it could and it would is not necessary for national security to get all these fighters i don't know i'm not an expert on a national security or fighter jets i do know that we do spend a disproportionate amount on fighting the war on terrorism which has not killed that many americans you know six hundred billion and we spend five hundred million on ocean which protect workers being killed but yet we have forty five hundred workers being killed a year on the job still i do think the defense budget as opposed to something like actually protecting the lives of workers in the workplace so dramatically higher but as a labor journalist really don't know much about national security it is interesting that this is kind of off the table the question about military spending when at the same time you know all the austerity measures are being taken talk of cutting time

time again workers benefits and you see the c.e.o. of luck martin once again making enormous profits why do you think that is i mean just in your personal opinion you know you're labeled labor journalist but why do you think it is that we don't talk about military spending and cutting that i think you know people feel insecure about it you can always cut welfare programs you can always do that i mean we see people on welfare as sort of living off you know the teat of the government or something like that being dependent but you look at a company like rocky that has you know huge profits. you know they have got seventeen billion worth of contracts last year i mean that company would not exist and would not have the kind of record profits and the kind of record salaries and they're entirely a government contractor they make almost nothing for the private sector i mean very little for the private sector but yet that's another question to ask is why is a company that's a contractor being allowed to treat workers like this should we have stronger federal laws that make it more difficult to treat workers with could you compare

this labor struggle to any in the past wisconsin i mean and what do you think the outcome is going to be. i mean the workers will probably be on strike for several weeks these workers here struck in two thousand and two thousand and three so i think they'll be out on several for several weeks i think eventually lockheed will be forced to close to question of how long they want to go out you know those talks about going out for two or three months they can really put the company in a tight spot i think they can get something good it's a question of whether or not they have that shop or kind of solidarity that thirty six hundred people want to stay out that long and you know that's the kind of thing that's always a big question to a strike because everybody enjoys being up the first day of a strike but as a straight goes on for weeks and months of people have to cut back their budget they lose their health care except for people become less willing to do it and you said that they can be replaced if they're out for long periods. well they get can be replaced if it's considered an economic strike by the national labor relations board although they filed their claim it's an unfair labor practice trade in that

the company's engaged in bad faith bargaining as well as a couple of other illegal categories of bargaining so if they can claim it's an unfair labor practice they can be replaced if it's an economic strike they can be replaced but in this kind of situation. the workers are are pretty tough to replace when it will be tough to do that how does the syllabus does lock it have a nationwide i mean employed tens of thousands of workers i don't know exactly how many is the only one with the fighter jets that they're making and they also do some work on their sixteen. and so you know looking at all these different labor disputes in the past is this this is just seems like an ongoing struggle that's just getting worse in times of economic recession more and more labor strikes more an austerity cut more more cuts for the middle class and really taking the brunt out on the middle class america you know what i mean what what can we do to prevent this it just seems like it's just getting worse and worse and taking it out on the working class so i think what we're going to lockheed are doing where they're

striking the comeback but i think folks are starting to reach a point where they can't you know cut their salaries in half anymore they'd be living in the street and for the last couple years you know folks are pretty good standard of living and they could cut a little they could trim a little they could you know maybe not take a vacation this year do that kind of thing but now we're talking about folks and i'm home as you see a record number of people getting foreclosed people trying to rise up and i'm trying to see that a lot i mean today eight hundred workers members of the same union i am went out on strike and really it illinois at a caterpillar facility there that's great well hopefully they will keep taking to the streets and keep demanding fair wages and fair benefits that was labor journalist mike elks and that does it for now for more on the stories we cover go to you tube dot com slash r t america or check out our web site r t dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter martin.