ON THE IMPORTANCE OF MAY DAY

     May Day, not to be confused with the signal for an emergency which is “mayday”, is a day of commemoration that is also known as Workers’ Day or International Workers’ Day and is celebrated worldwide. A fun fact about May Day is that it shares the date with a traditional holiday of European origin that is called, you guessed it, “May Day” which is known as a celebration of welcoming spring. The May Day or International Workers’ Day that is known around the world today was born from the situation during the period of the industrial revolution. So, let us dive into what it was like during the industrial revolution.

     The industrial revolution was a period of transition where large scales of advancement from mostly agrarian economies into industrialized complexes happened. Although society was rapidly developing for the better, the same could not be said for most of the people of the working class during that period. I would say the cost of this rapid growth was the people of the working class. Working hours were inhumanly long, while the wages that were given were not on par. The workers were exploited in which they were employed as long as nineteen to twenty hours a day. To combat this sort of situation, the workers began a movement to fight for shorter work hours as well as higher wages.

     This movement took the form of strikes in which workers would exercise mass refusal to work to have their voices heard by the company and the government. One major and significant occurrence was the event that happened in Chicago, the United States, which is later known as the Haymarket affair on May 1, 1886. The mass strikes that happened were demanding an eight-hour work duration limit a day. Following this event was a tragedy when chaos happened between the protesters and the police in which it killed several people and wounded others.

     In 1889, it was declared by the International Socialist Conference that the 1st of May would be International Workers’ Day to commemorate the Haymarket affair. And that was how we got the holiday of commemoration that we have now as well as its perks such as an eight-hour a day work time, adequate minimum wage, workers’ rights, and so on.

References

History.com Editors. (2020, April 30). May Day. Retrieved from History.com: https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/history-of-may-day

Rothman, L. (2017, May 1). The Bloody Story of How May Day Became a Holiday for Workers. Retrieved from Time: https://time.com/3836834/may-day-labor-history/

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2021, February 21). Industrial Revolution. Retrieved from Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/event/Industrial-Revolution

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2021, March 15). May Day. Retrieved from Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/May-Day-international-observance

Trachtenberg, A. (2002, March). The History of May Day. Retrieved from marxists.org: https://www.marxists.org/subject/mayday/articles/tracht.html