By Nathan K
When an American hears Labor Day, what comes to mind? The end of Summer? barbecue, beers, and the flag? Not wearing white? It seems kind of odd that, besides getting a day off on the calendar, labor itself is put on the backburner, and agitation is conspicuously absent from America’s ostensible worker holiday. To those wondering why, it should come as no surprise that the first Monday in September is an aberration compared to Labor days across the world, a holiday in the United States and Canada, but meaningless to the more than 150 countries around the world that instead recognize May 1st as International Workers Day. You may know it by another name: May Day.
The roots behind the choice of May 1st as an international holiday for labor come specifically from the fight for an eight hour workday in the 1800s. Prior to the First World War, most countries had laws for 10 hour days, usually 6am to 6pm, if they had any laws regulating working hours at all. This brutal state of affairs had workers spending over half their waking hours on the clock, with little spare time before needing to sleep after a shift. As the labor movement consolidated through the 1800s, the fight for an eight hour day became a crucial centerpiece of worker demands.
In the United States, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, a precursor to the AFL, set May 1st 1886 as a deadline to make the eight hour day standard. 500,000 workers turned out in force to fight for workers rights, and as the strike progressed into its 3rd day strikebreakers and police in Chicago caused the death of two workers. Retaliation against this act of police violence led to a further 3,000 gathering in Haymarket Square the next day to rally in solidarity, and the clashes with Police that followed as they attempted to forcibly disperse this peaceful rally led to a further 15 deaths and 70 injuries.
The men behind the “Haymarket Affair” were sentenced in a rigged trial. Four were executed and the remaining three were given lengthy prison sentences. Capitalists across the world hoped that workers would learn their lesson, and Haymarket would fade into history.
But the workers didn’t forget.
Those killed, either at the riot or at the hands of the state, became Martyrs for the cause of an eight hour day. At the meeting of the Second International in Paris in 1889 a great demonstration, the first “International Workingmen's Day”, was planned for May 1st of 1890 in honor of those who died fighting for the cause of work hour reduction. The success of this event around the world led to the establishment of the May Day we all know and love.
Of course knowing the history of May Day, and how inextricably it is tied to the American Labor movement, makes the “Labor Day” recognized by the US in September all the more cynical. Anxiety over the explicitly political and socialist meaning behind May 1 led President Grover Clevland to push the first Monday of September as a moderate alternative. This date had already been discussed in some AFL-affiliated circles as a potential “holiday for labor”. The American government’s attempts to suppress awareness of May Day continued into the 1950s with the establishment of “Loyalty Day” on May 1st as a nationalist celebration, though laughably few people know about this holiday to commemorate “American history and declaring loyalty to the United States”.
Though the eight hour workday has been won in the global north, the worker’s struggle for control of our economic and political agency is far from complete — especially for our comrades in the global south. This May Day, we should remember our forebears, who fought for eight hours between backbreaking 12 hour shifts. If they could win eight hours, what could we win?