May Day

May Day, day commemorating the historic struggles and gains made by workers and the labor movement, also called International Workers’ Day. May Day is observed on May 1 in many countries and is a public holiday in countries including India, South Africa, China, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, and Greece.

In the United States and Canada, a similar observance known as Labor Day occurs on the first Monday of September.

Origin

May Day finds its origin in the United States, where workers struggled to reduce their working hours, which often stretched from 14 to 20 hours a day. Increasingly, the demand for a shorter workday was raised alongside demands for increased wages. As industrialization increased in the early 19th century, workers began organizing themselves into trade unions to demand humane conditions, and by 1837, under President Van Buren, a 10-hour workday was established for government workers. This 10-hour workday was, however, not universal, and the struggle to make it so continued for the next few decades.

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In the 1850s this demand gradually evolved into the more radical and widely embraced call for an eight-hour workday. The impact of this demand extended beyond the United States, as workers in Australia and other countries struggled for the same. In 1856 Australian stonemasons won an eight-hour workday. By the 1860s this demand gained influential backing when delegates from various trade unions gathered in Baltimore to form the National Labor Union (NLU) in the United States. The NLU sought to unify workers across trades and passed a resolution at their inaugural meeting in 1866 that declared that the workday would be a maximum of eight hours across all states. The NLU eventually declined, but it laid the groundwork for a broader labor movement. That year the Geneva Congress of the First International endorsed the demand for an eight-hour workday.

The call for a shorter workday became only a small part of what May Day came to represent. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada (which later became the American Federation of Labor) passed a resolution in 1884 declaring that from May 1, 1886, eight hours would constitute a legal day’s labor. This set a deadline and a nationwide call for action. The federation also called for an organized mass strike on May 1, 1886. The cause drew as many as 500,000 workers, including many unskilled and previously unorganized workers, involved in about 1,500 strikes. The movement became widespread across major cities in the United States, and was centered in Chicago, where the strike became especially hostile in Haymarket Square. What began as a continuation of peaceful demonstrations soon turned into a violent confrontation with police.

In 1889, the Second International, an international federation of socialist groups and trade unions, designated May 1 as a day in support of workers, in commemoration of the Haymarket Riot in Chicago (1886). Five years later, U.S. Pres. Grover Cleveland, uneasy with the socialist origins of Workers’ Day, signed legislation to make Labor Day—already held in some states on the first Monday of September—the official U.S. holiday in honor of workers. Canada followed suit not long afterward.

Read more about the Haymarket Affair.

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Evolution

In Europe May 1 was historically associated with rural pagan festivals (see May Day), but the original meaning of the day was gradually replaced by the modern association with the labor movement. In the Soviet Union, leaders embraced the new holiday, believing it would encourage workers in Europe and the United States to unite against capitalism. The day became a significant holiday in the Soviet Union and in the Eastern bloc countries, with high-profile parades, including one in Moscow’s Red Square presided over by top government and Communist Party functionaries, celebrating the worker and showcasing Soviet military might. In Germany Labor Day became an official holiday in 1933 after the rise of the Nazi Party. Ironically, Germany abolished free unions the day after establishing the holiday, virtually destroying the German labor movement.

Observances

With the breakup of the Soviet Union and the fall of communist governments in eastern Europe in the late 20th century, large-scale May Day celebrations in that region declined in importance. In many countries around the world, however, May Day has been recognized as a public holiday, and it continues to be celebrated with picnics and parties while serving as an occasion for demonstrations and rallies in support of workers.