May Day:

Clarion call for workers’ rights

In recent years, the mass mobilisations of immigrant workers for their rights has once again brought May Day to the forefront of many workers’ consciousness. Paradoxically, however, “International Workers’ Day” is not widely celebrated in the country where it was born. In fact, it comes as a surprise to many to learn that May Day was originally “Made in the USA”.

Today, with millions being forced to work longer and harder for less pay, despite record levels of unemployment, it’s relevant to take a look at the history of this tradition of struggle and its lessons for 2010.

May Day was born out of the struggle for the eight-hour work day more than 100 years ago. In many countries it is the most important date on the calendar for millions of workers and youth, marked by mass mobilisations of the trade unions, mass workers’ parties and student organisations, and in some, by one day general strikes.

Struggles by workers for a reduction of the working day have existed since the beginnings of the capitalist system itself. For most of the 19th century, when the “Industrial Revolution” was taking off in Western Europe and the United States as part of the development of modern capitalism, workdays of 10, 12, 16 and even 18 hours were common.

Overtime pay was practically non-existent, and only came about later as a result of the struggles of the unions. Many men, women, and children worked literally from sunrise to sunset.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were the first to give a scientific explanation of the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class through the relations of production created under the capitalist system.

As part of this explanation, they pointed out that capitalism, then and now, treats workers’ labour power, or ability to work, as a commodity. From the capitalists’ viewpoint, it is always in their interest to raise the productivity of labour of each worker, to make them work as much as possible and as cheaply as possible.

Marx and Engels also explained that the extraction of profits from the workers’ labour power could be increased by an extension of the working day.

In the 19th century, factory bosses were able to force such long working days on workers due to the flood of people from the countryside streaming into the cities looking for work.

Working class

It was during this period that the working class itself was first coming into being in many countries, the vast majority of people who, just like today, have no other means of securing a living other than selling their ability to work to the capitalists. But the history of the working class is full of attempts, some successful some not, to unite together to change our conditions of work, and beyond that, to change society at large.

The first focal point for the working class’ struggles was by necessity for a reduction of the working day. In the United States, the first organised stirrings on this front began not long after the end of the Civil War. By 1877, the overwork of rail workers amidst economic crisis and unemployment sparked a spontaneous general strike that spread across the country within days, as fast as striking workers could speed locomotives from one city to the next.

Alongside the still-embryonic official unions, “Eight Hour committees” began to spring up across the country, which not only spread the idea of the eight-hour day, but began to organise workers for strike actions on May 1 to force the bosses and the State to pass legislation limiting the legal workday.

By 1886, the movement for the eight-hour day began to take more shape, based on events in Chicago. At its 1884 national convention, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labour Unions (which later became the American Federation of Labour) proclaimed that “eight-hours shall constitute a legal day’s labour from and after May 1, 1886.”

On that date, there was a tremendous response by Chicago workers, who laid down tools for the day and joined eight-hour rallies in the city’s parks and marched in the streets.

In response, the Chicago ruling class set the city’s police and courts after the eight-hour movement, engineering a police provocation and show trial that gave the U.S. labour movement its first martyrs.

The trial and execution of these workers’ leaders only intensified the struggle for the eight-hour day, and the case of the “Haymarket Martyrs” became a rallying point for workers internationally.

The unions organised coast to coast to prepare the ground more than a year in advance for a national, one day strike on May 1, 1890 to demand federal legislation limiting the work day to eight-hours. In 1889, at its founding congress held in Paris, the newly created Second International took up the demand and also fixed the date of May 1st, 1890 for a general strike on a world scale.

First mass expression

Workers successfully joined forces across the globe in the first mass expression of workers’ internationalism. Alexander Trachtenberg, in The History of May Day, gave this description of the first May Day:

“May Day, 1890, was celebrated in many European countries, and in the United States the Carpenters’ Union and other building trades entered into a general strike for the eight-hour day. Many thousands paraded the streets in support of the eight-hour day demand; and the demonstrations were closed with great open air mass meetings at central points.”

This first global May Day marked a turning point for the struggle for the eight-hour day.

In Europe, the Second International, made up of the mass parties created by the working class alongside the unions, were able to win eight-hour legislation which became the norm in many countries. Thereafter, May Day remained a key date for the labour movement.

The reduction of the working day has always been a central demand for the working class movement.

Above all, it is a political issue, not just an economic one. When people are forced to work the greater part of the day there is little time or energy left for anything else. Work consumes everything.

The burden of too much work and too little time weighs especially on female workers, who often have to face the “second shift” at home, of the majority of the domestic chores, child care and so on, which is made worse by the lack of affordable, quality child care and other services.

This situation highlights the need for a renewed struggle to reduce the hours of work, for 30 hour work week the six-hour day with no loss in pay. This would allow for full employment and greater leisure time for everyone to continue education, pursue other interests, and so on.

- Socialist Appeal, USA