May Day

The international holiday, celebrated May 1st, a week from this Sunday, in virtually every country around the world except the United States, ironically began here in Chicago during the worker's struggle for the eight hour day.

On May 1st, 1886, the American Federation of Labor declared a national strike to demand an eight hour work day. Two days later, police in Chicago fired into a crowd of striking workers at the McCormick Harvester plant, killing several workers*. The next day in Haymarket Square, a demonstration was called in response to the killings. Although the demonstration was peaceful, the police attempted to disperse the crowd, and a bomb was thrown, killing several police officers*. Eight labor leaders were arrested, seven of which were not even present at the time of the bombing. With no evidence linking them to the crime, they were tried based on their beliefs, and some to all* were sentenced to death.

*In researching this holiday, I found tremendous discrepencies in the numbers. The number of workers killed by police during the McCormick Harvester strike ranges from 1-4, the number of police killed in Haymarket Square ranges from 2-15, and the number of individuals sentenced to death ranged from 5-8. The description of the history depends entirely on the source. Conservative sites, who still seem to still see this as a communist plot, manipulated the numbers in their favor, and also gave very detailed descriptions of the killed police officers' identitys and the supposed brutality of their deaths, but described the worker's deaths as simply "a shooting and one fatality when police tangled with rioters." Left wing sites were equally biased.

The disparity between accounts of the events, as well as the lack of recognition of the holiday here in the US, where it began, demonstrate that Americans are losing the struggle for workers rights. The eight hour work day is all but gone. Workers are only entitled to overtime after working more than forty hours per week, and even that is under attack by conservatives. Just last year, the Department of Labor regulations were changed, reclassifying more than eight million workers as "management" and thus not entitled to overtime pay.

May 1st was officially recognized as "Loyalty Day" in the 1920's to contrast what was seen as a "communist" holiday. In this official proclaimation by George W. Bush in 2004, citizens are encouraged to "demonstrate their commitment to our country by supporting our military, serving each other, and teaching our young people about our history and values." Apparantly, by "teaching our young people about our history and values", he actually means creating a ridiculous holiday to attempt to erase aspects of history which he would rather we forget.