Workers’ Labor Day

In events throughout Washington, thousands came together to celebrate the labor movement, build community, and flex worker power

SEATTLE, WA (September 2, 2025) — Thousands of union members and community allies came together across the state over the Labor Day weekend, celebrating worker power and rallying against attacks on working families. These actions, some of which were convened under the banner of ‘Workers over Billionaires,’ challenged the enrichment and power expansion of billionaires at the expense of working people.

In Seattle, hundreds rallied outside the offices of Palantir, the tech company co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel whose surveillance technology is used by ICE to further the federal administration’s campaign of militarized and cruel detention and deportation of working people.

“The targeting technologies used by ICE on our neighbors and union members bring battlefield technology like that used in Palestine upon our communities,” said Juan Sebastian Pinto, an organizer, educator, and former Palantir employee. “They also violate our first and fourth amendment rights by weaponizing our data against us, and centralizing power away from democratic and accountability processes to algorithmic systems and big tech.”

Fernando Rocha, a member of IATSE Local 15 who was detained by ICE at the notorious NW Detention Center in Tacoma, spoke of the dehumanizing and humiliating experience, showing the ankle monitor he has been forced to wear as a condition of release while he awaits a hearing in his asylum case. Rocha shared the stories of the men he was detained with, immigrants who have spent years in the U.S., raising families, paying taxes, and yet now are treated as criminals.

“It felt like a broken United Nations summit, except this one [was] made up of the forgotten, the castaways,” said Rocha.

“These were no criminals,” Rocha continued. “They were workers, fathers, providers, men whose only ‘crime’ was the pursuit of survival. Most came from construction sites, farms, kitchens, and saloons. Some had once held degrees and titles in their countries — the doctor from India, now driving a taxi. The engineer from the Middle East, now sweeping floors. They had traded their dreams for jobs most Americans wouldn’t touch, not because they lacked ambition or education, but because they were chasing something more urgent: dignity, safety, a future.”

Fernando Rocha (IATSE 15) speaks at the rally against Palantir.

In Lakewood at the Labor Day gathering hosted by Pierce County Central Labor Council, Washington State Labor Council President April Sims emphasized that this connection between billionaire profits and the exploitation of working people that is central to the federal administration’s immigration policy is also the foundation of the struggles facing all working families.

“While corporations are making record profits, too many of us are told to do more with less,” said Sims. “While billionaires blast themselves into space, families in Pierce County are wondering if they can afford groceries. That’s why we say loud and clear—enough is enough. Across this country, workers are rising up: baristas, machinists, nurses, teachers, auto workers, hotel workers. They’re organizing, they’re striking, and they’re winning.”

Working people also rallied in Vancouver, in solidarity with classified staff on strike in the Evergreen School District, and in Olympia, in support of public sector workers.