If you work an eight-hour work day, today’s the day to thank a union for that.
Hundreds of thousands of workers and advocates are preparing to hit the streets tomorrow to celebrate May Day—or International Workers Day—in another round of national protests against President Donald Trump’s attacks on labor and immigrants.
For those who don’t know, May Day dates back to the Haymarket Affair in May 1866, when workers in Chicago went on strike fighting for the eight-hour workday. Back then, working 16-hour days was the norm.
The strike lasted for four days as workers faced increasing violence from the police, which eventually culminated in the Haymarket Affair after an unknown individual set off a bomb in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. This caused the police to start firing upon the striking workers. Ultimately, seven police officers and four workers were killed and dozens of others wounded.
Three years later, the International Socialists Conference declared May 1st International Workers Day to remember those who died during the Haymarket Affair, and it’s been a yearly tradition since.
In Pennsylvania, it took coal miners with the United Mineworkers of America in the anthracite region 30 years to win the right to an eight-hour workday on May 1, 1916, when the union and local coal operators negotiated it into a contract.
“A workday of more than 8 hours is Unamerican,” the mineworkers’ demands read. “From bed to work and work to bed belongs to an age that has long passed.”
