< News

26.05.2026 / News /

International Workers’ Day celebrations — UVW style 

This year, United Voices of the World (UVW) marked International Workers’ Day with joy, defiance, and determination — celebrating culture, resistance, solidarity, and working-class struggle, both past and present. 

UVW is a union where a cleaner, a plumber, a student, or an artist can all be elected to lead. That spirit shaped this year’s celebration. Our newly elected General Secretary who officially started their term on International Workers’ Day is living proof. They bring a politics rooted in struggle, solidarity, and love, grounded in lived experience and the fight for dignity at work. 

UVW members gathered at Pelican House for a powerful May Day celebration and alongside comrades we shared stories of struggle, resistance, and international solidarity. The students from UVW’s Emanuel Gomes School of Organising (EGOS) also joined the celebrations to mark their graduation and kickstart a summer of organising. Through music, speeches, and a delicious UVW barbecue, we came together in collective joy and renewed commitment. 

Speaking at the event, newly elected General Secretary Nelly Ospino said: “I am part of a long line of trade unionists and revolutionaries. My great-grandfather and grandfather were trade unionists on the banana plantations of Santa Marta, Colombia, and survived the Chiquita banana massacre.** My grandmother, a militant M-19 guerrillera, taught me the power of organised working-class struggle. I grew up sitting in meetings with revolutionaries.” 

Then on 4 May UVW joined thousands of workers on the May Day rally, where we danced, chanted and walked proudly through central London. This year marked 100 years since the 1926 General Strike — when miners and workers across Britain stood together to demand better pay and conditions. We honoured that history proudly beneath our banner held high. 

At UVW when we say “mil veces venceremos” — a thousand times we will win — it is not just a slogan and when we say “el pueblo apoya al pueblo” — the people support the people — it’s more than words. It is a commitment we act on, every single day.
 
 
From our workplaces to our communities, we will keep organising, building power, and strengthening solidarity through collective action, legal action, and direct action. 

** The Banana Massacre was a violent suppression of striking workers employed by the United Fruit Company in Ciénaga, near Santa Marta, between 5–6 December 1928. The strike had started on 12 November 1928, when workers stopped working to demand better and fairer working conditions. After negotiations failed and the company refused to meet the workers’ demands, the Colombian government of Miguel Abadía Méndez sent troops to end the strike. The military intervention resulted in the deaths of an estimated 47 to 2,000 people. 

SHARE