May Day

Over a century and two decades have passed since the very first Labor Day in the US (with about 300,000 participants), on May 1, 1886. Incidentally, there are three countries which chose a different day instead of May 1st to represent Labor Day, one of which is the US.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, May 1 was declared as “Law and Order” day with the aim of erasing the memory of the massive struggle of working people for an eight hours workday. As a result, Labor Day was moved to September, a day with no historical significance, in order to derail public attention from one of the most important labor movements in American history. There is no need to repeat the story, since facts can be found throughout the pages of history. It is sufficient to mention that labor unions gathered in 1884 and proclaimed an eight hour workday, to commence in May 1 1886. A peaceful rally was organized in that target day, with participants in Chicago estimated close to 100,000 people, and without an incident since the police did not show their usual brutality. It is also worthwhile to mention the engagement of police and striking workers at McCormick Reaper Works of two days later (May 3, 1886) which resulted in the murder of some strikers and which prompted the following day meeting in a place called Haymarket, concluding with the well known Haymarket massacre. May Day is celebrated officially in 66 countries on May 1st.

American working people as a whole has achieved some basic rights. These rights are missing from majority of third world working societies, and are challenged and being fought for by labor movements in many other countries. However, these basic rights have been achieved in the US history through some bloody struggles including negotiations, rallies, demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins, and other forms of resistance. And, none of these struggles have been observed by the government peacefully. From the very beginning of the conception of the US, and according to the first draft of the constitution, the only people who could vote to elect politicians into an office were white landowners. The aim was to keep government positions in the hands of a few aristocrats. Women, people with property less than certain acreage, Native Americans, and of course slaves, were forbidden to vote. Each one of these excluded groups received the right to vote after many bloody demonstrations and revolts. Creation of people’s grass root organizations, such as Labor Unions, Anarchists, Socialists, Women’s Suffrage, and tens of other movements has been due to such inequalities. Other rights of working people such as five days a week work, abolition of child labor, minimum wage, gender equality; and many others (which we take as granted) have been achieved likewise. May 1st 1886, as it was mentioned earlier, was the very first Labor Day demonstration demanding a reduction of 12, 14, 16 hours workday to an 8 hours work per day.

These days, we are witnessing an economical melt down as a result of years of Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush policies of watering down all labor laws and disarming labor unions. We can recall Reagan’s successful elimination of air traffic controllers’ union in early 80’s. Union busting has continued to this day in the past thirty years to a point that the most respected industry in the world, US auto industry, offers wages and benefits far less than thirty years before. Businesses have learned to cut costs of suppliers, materials, overhead, and labor in order to produce more profit for the stockholders. However, in the past three decades they have been increasing their overhead by escalating salaries and bonuses of executives, on the shoulder of the labor. It has come to the point that the competitiveness of any industry in the international market is not valid any longer. Businesses have forgotten that their products are guaranteed to be competitive when labor is satisfied. However, the relationship between the labor and the management has always been a bloody struggle. US government has always played a big role in guaranteeing the interest of capitalists. Today, each for-profit-organization is a dictatorial entity that creates fear among workers of losing their jobs in order to exploit workers and subjugate them to more hours for less pay. Government passes laws to assist businesses fulfilling this mission. For instance, by separating salary form wage and exempted from non-exempted employees, a way to exploit workers to work 12 hours for an 8 hours pay is legalized by the government. However, the struggle continues.