International Workers Day: In celebration of hands that endeavour

Image: Francis Mascarenhas / Reuters
Contract labourers clean a beach on a hot day in Mumbai, India, on April 29, 2024. The hardy labourers collect around 250 metric tons of garbage from the beaches every day along Mumbai's  34 km-long coastline, so the walkers have a clean beach to walk on in the morning.

Image: Seth Herald / Reuters
Hourly factory workers at Volkswagen's assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, react in joy as a majority vote results in favour of unionisation on April 19, 2024, thus approving a union with the United Auto Workers (UAW), in a significant victory for organised labour in the Southern United States.

Image: Gonzalo Fuentes/Pool / Reuters
French President Emmanuel Macron, officials and workers look at a diving performance during the inauguration of the Olympic Aquatics Centre (CAO), a multifunctional venue for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games in Saint-Denis, near Paris, France, on April 4, 2024. Paying tribute to the vast array of engineers, landscapers and workers, Macron lauded 'the great human chain that has made it possible.'

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Image: Isabel Infantes / Reuters
The Labour Party's headquarters is covered in red paint by 'Youth Demand', a group of activists calling for an arms embargo on Israel in London, Britain, on April 8, 2024. The Labour Party was founded in 1900, having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the 19th century to give ordinary people a voice and deliver for working people.

Image: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images/AFP
Demolition workers cut away parts of the Francis Scott Key Bridge wreckage with blow torches on April 04, 2024, in Baltimore, Maryland, US. The bridge had collapsed after being struck by the 984-foot cargo ship Dali on March 26. Two members of a road repair crew who were working on the bridge at the time of the collision are dead, and four more remain missing.   

Image: Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP
Ukrainian workers dismantle a Soviet-era monument symbolising the Pereiaslav Agreement signed in 1645, a pledge of allegiance by Ukrainian Cossacks to the Tsar of Russia, in Kyiv on April 30, 2024. Kyiv authorities began taking down the  1982 Soviet-era memorial complex celebrating friendship with Russia more than two years into an invasion by Moscow, which has cost tens of thousands of lives.
 
Image: AFP
People gather around a dead World Central Kitchen worker at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, on April 1, 2024, amid the ongoing battle between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. World Central Kitchen, a food aid organisation, said an Israeli strike killed several of its workers in the besieged Gaza Strip on April 1.
 
Image: Yara Nardi / Reuters
Over a thousand cardboard coffins, symbolising the number of victims who lost their lives at a workplace last year, are placed in Piazza del Popolo during the campaign 'Zero Dead at Work' organised by the Italian Labor Union (UIL) in Rome, Italy on March 19, 2024. Fatal accidents in the workplace regularly make headlines in the Italian press, each time sparking a debate on risk prevention.

Image: Ishara S. KODIKARA / AFP
Workers pack firecrackers in the village of Kimbulapitiya on the outskirts of Colombo on April 5, 2024, ahead of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year celebrations. Disregarding government regulations, villagers take the work into their bedrooms and kitchens, leaving them vulnerable to commonplace explosions.
 
Image: RODRIGO ARANGUA / AFP
Workers called by the Unified Workers Centre (CUT) participated in a demonstration during a nationwide strike called by trade unions in Santiago, Chile, on April 11, 2024. The strikers' demands included wage increases, improved housing, stronger collective bargaining rights, better pensions, free education and quality healthcare.

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Image: Hector RETAMAL / AFP
Workers are seen next to the paddock at the Shanghai International Circuit ahead of the Formula One Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, China, on April 17, 2024.  Eighteen months after a marshland in Jiading District of Shanghai and $450 million was earmarked for Formula 1, a significant number laboured over the birth of the state-of-the-art Shanghai International Circuit
 
Image: Amit Dave / Reuters
Workers assemble a blade of a power-generating windmill turbine at the Adani Green Energy Ltd (AGEL) plant in Mundra, India, on April 11, 2024. Thousands of workers are helping build the world's largest solar and wind renewable energy project,  transporting construction material, building substations and laying wires for miles in the bare expanse of the large salt deserts bordering Pakistan.

Image: Intel Corporation/Handout via REUTERS
Workers are seen in front of a "High NA EUV" lithography system at an Intel facility in Hillsboro, Oregon, US, on April 19, 2024. Intel said on April 18 that it had become the first company to assemble one of the machines made by Dutch computer chip equipment supplier ASML. These machines are expected to lead to new generations of smaller, faster computer chips.
  
Image: Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP
Workers clean the famous Trevi fountain in Rome, Italy, on April 15, 2024. 2.78 million tourists visit Rome every year, and coins are tossed into the fountain every day by tourists wishing for love or good health. The fountain is drained for cleaning twice a month, and the coins tourists throw are collected twice a week.

Image: Indranil Aditya/NurPhoto via Getty Images
A Zomato food delivery person takes a lunch break, parking his electric scooter at an embankment by the sea in Mumbai, India, on April 9, 2024. Recently, IIT-Delhi researchers have proposed a novel solution named 'Work4Food' to ensure a 'fair income guarantee' to food-delivery agents and minimise platform costs. The solution was recently presented at the prestigious International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.