Several May Day marches, which are traditional events, had turned violent in Germany, Turkey and Venezuela as riot police battled protesters in their respective countries.
[1] Further marches had taken place in Russia, Ukraine, the Philippines, Japan and Hong Kong, Cuba, Italy and Spain.
[1] Approximately 1,000 radicals and anti-capitalists demonstrated peacefully in front of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec building in Montreal.
An opposition protest of a few thousand in the capital was dispersed with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons, after organizers expressed their intentions to pass through the barricades, set up several blocks away from the National Assembly -the opposition's intended destination- to deliver a document denouncing supposed actions against labor unions by the Chávez government.
[11] Several hundred workers marched peacefully through Hong Kong in protest against job cuts and reduced working hours.
In one of the largest May Day protests there in recent times, 10,000 people marched against record high levels of unemployment nearing 6%.
[citation needed] France's eight major trade unions decided to unite in their May Day rallies for the first time since the end of World War II.
[18] Several tens of thousands of people marched in three hundred protests through cities such as Bordeaux, Grenoble, Marseille and Paris.
[16] In protests organized by UGT and CCOO, some of Spain's largest unions, more than 10 thousand demonstrators collected in the centre of Madrid.