May Day, International Workers Day, and Modern America
May Day is rapidly approaching. While having originally started as a celebration of Spring’s arrival in European cultures, it also has been misrepresented in the Cold War era United States in a campaign to suppress the Labor Movement by accusing it of being “communist.” In fact, this International Workers Day version of May Day is as American as baseball or Nick Tahou’s Garbage Plate because the holiday got its start the United States in pursuit of something many of us take for granted – the 8-hour workday.
The Movement for the 8-hour workday has a long history. While the idea was entertained as early as the 16th century, it wasn’t really advocated for until the 19th century by organizations like the International Workingmen’s Association as well as Labor Unions and similar movements. In the United States, people initially started organizing around a 10-hour workday. In fact, one of the earliest Labor actions in the U.S. was for a 10-hour day when carpenters in Philadelphia called a strike in 1791 – just 4 years after the signing of the Constitution. Strikes are American! The first city-wide general strike in the States, in 1835 and also in Philadelphia, was for a 10-hour workday.
Ten hours is a long time to be away from home and, within a couple decades, American Labor started organizing for an 8-hour day. Chicago Labor organizers had significant success recruiting workers to the popular cause. On May 1, 1867, there was a city-wide general strike in Chicago for the 8-hour workday. On May 1, 1886, Chicago held the first modern May Day Labor parade to demand an 8-hour workday. It was coordinated with and immediately followed by a nationwide strike. Three days later, at an outdoor meeting in Haymarket Square called to address police brutality at a recent strike, someone threw a bomb into the crowd. The explosion caused the assembled police to wantonly fire into the crowd, stop to reload, and fire again. In the chaos, at least four people were murdered and over 70 were wounded. This incident has come to be known as the Haymarket Massacre and eight innocent organizers were railroaded with fabricated evidence and industrial capitalist political motivation and found guilty for causing it. Four would be hung and one would die under suspicious circumstances while in custody. The last three were eventually pardoned when the extent of these injustices were fully understood by the people of Illinois.
It is because of the determination of the Labor Movement to establish the 8-hour workday, and the sacrifices of those like the Haymarket Martyrs, that most workers in the United States were eventually able to benefit from the 8-hour shift we take for granted today – despite the United States’ failure to sign the International Labor Organization’s Hours of Work Convention which was first ratified in 1919. The U.S. still hasn’t signed. The 1937 Fair Labor Standards Act finally gave much of the American working class the opportunity to achieve something approaching a reasonable work-life balance.
Even though the United States was unacceptably slow in recognizing the 8-hour day, the rest of the World and global Labor movements immediately recognized the sacrifices being made by American Workers. After all, sacrificing one's life in the pursuit of improving the lives of the Working Class is a noble act of a historic level. After the first May Day parade in Chicago in 1886, the Labor Movement and Unions all across the United States and the World began holding annual May Day marches and rallies to remember the sacrifices made to improve working conditions and the people’s material well-being. Despite initially starting in America, the Red Scare, McCarthyism, and the policies of every Presidential administration suppressed this quintessentially American Workers’ holiday. The United States even went so far as to introduce a sanitized Labor Day – which is it the national holiday we recognize now – to avoid the association with the grassroots worker-lead May 1st. Eugene Debs succinctly summarized the American political posture towards workers when he wrote,
The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles.
Worldwide, however, workers celebrated. Notoriously though, authoritarian Communist governments co-opted May 1st and used it as a propaganda device to hold massive, threatening military marches. Like the United States’ suppression and propaganda, these parades obscured the meaning behind May Day and worked to further the American capitalist narrative that International Workers Day was “communist.” Workers were not distracted, however, and continued to hold events and march to celebrate, remember the sacrifices of their Fellow Workers, and recommit themselves to the struggle.
Now, Workers around the World and in the United States are denied an 8-hour workday. Neo-liberal policies have introduced levels of exploitation and precarity thought by many to have been consigned to history books. The American oligarchs and the 1%, through corrupted legal decisions like the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and by those, who Sinclair Lewis described as “the worst Fascists...who disowned the word ‘Fascism’ and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty,” sought to further subjugate the the Middle and Working Classes. Donald Trump, a Lewisian villain made flesh, was elected with the financial assistance of the richest man alive and other, lesser, oligarchs with dark money, claiming he will “make America great again.” Great for whom? The wealthy – that’s who - despite his populist appeal. Right now, May Day is more important than ever.
To paraphrase Lucy Parsons, in this chaotic time we must be those who work for good rather than gold. We must remember our Fellow Workers who made sacrifices to improve the material well-being of everyone. At the same time, we must recognize other social issues which impact Workers. These are Labor issues too! Immigrants are Workers. The LBGTQ+ community are Workers. Workers have skin colors of all types and practice all religions. Women, men, and the intersexed are Workers. There are Workers in Gaza and Israel. There are Workers in Ukraine and Russia. There are Workers in all political parties; on all continents. We need to stand in Solidarity with all Workers, retirees, the unemployed, and unhoused – even while our rights are threatened by the American kakistocracy. We are all in this together. By doing so, we will only defend and strengthen everyone’s rights through our struggle and our continued endurance. Stand together or fall apart!
Despite our many apparent differences, the members of the Working and Middle Classes all have more in common with one another than they do with the 1%. We must help each other up. We must not fight the 1%’s imperialist wars. There are many of us and few of them! To channel Socrates through Eugene Debs, WE are Workers of the World. Do not let illegitimate or political actors distract and herd and enclose us in their favorite pastures of despair. WE are the leaders. Workers of the World unite! Organize for a better worksite, better schools, and a better World for all. Stand together in strength and Solidarity this May Day!
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