Activists kick boxes, which read “Education is commercialized”, as a way of protesting against the high costs of education during a May Day rally in Taipei, Tuesday. Hundreds of people took to the streets in the annual Labor Day parade to demand more labor rights and higher pay. — Reuters MANILA — May Day moved beyond its roots as an international workers' holiday to a day of international protest Tuesday, with rallies throughout Asia demanding wage increases and marches planned across Europe over government-imposed austerity measures. Thousands of workers protested in the Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan and other parts of Asia, with demands for wage hikes amid soaring oil prices a common theme. They said their take-home pay could not keep up with rising consumer prices and also called for lower school fees. In debt-crippled Greece, more than 2,000 people marched through central Athens in subdued May Day protests centered on the country's harsh austerity program. Young men targeted political party stands, and minor scuffles broke out. Two stands were destroyed and another one partially burnt. There were no injuries. Other Europeans also planned to take to the streets to protest measures to cut spending that are being blamed for a big jump in the number of unemployed, particularly in Spain, where one in four people is now out of work. In the United States, demonstrations, strikes and acts of civil disobedience were planned, including what could be the country's most high-profile Occupy rallies since the anti-Wall Street encampments came down in the fall. In Asia, workers demanded wage increases in peaceful but noisy protests. In the Philippine capital, Manila, more than 8,000 members of a huge labor alliance, many clad in red shirts and waving red streamers, marched under a brutal sun for 4 kilometers to a heavily barricaded bridge near the Malacanang presidential palace, which teemed with thousands of riot police, Manila police chief Alex Gutierrez said. Another group of left-wing workers later burned a huge effigy of President Benigno Aquino III, depicting him as a lackey of the United States and big business. A few hundred workers marched to the US Embassy, but were stopped by riot police about a block away. The protesters burned a mock US flag and went away. Aquino rejected their calls for a $3 daily pay hike, which he warned could worsen inflation, spark layoffs and turn away foreign investors. In Indonesia, thousands of protesters demanding higher wages paraded through traffic-clogged streets in the capital, Jakarta, where 16,000 police and soldiers were deployed at locations including the presidential palace and airports. In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, some 500 people rallied, calling for a higher minimum wage than the one announced Monday by Prime Minister Najib Razak. Najib's plan for the country's first-ever minimum wage calls for minimum monthly pay of 900 ringgit ($297) for private-sector workers in peninsular Malaysia and 800 ringgit ($264) in two poor eastern states. The protesters marched from a market to the headquarters of Maybank, the nation's largest bank, calling for a minimum monthly wage of 1,500 ringgit ($496) a month.
