Most of the world observes International Workers’ Day on May 1 or the first Monday in May each year, but not the U.S. and Canada. Instead, Americans and Canadians have celebrated Labor Day as a national holiday on the first Monday in September since 1894, 12 years after the first observance of Labor Day in New York City.
Though “May Day” celebrations are generally more political and Labor Day more recreational, both holidays arose in the U.S. nearly 150 years ago, in the midst of an explosive labor uprising in America’s industrial heartland. Their founding united native-born and immigrant workers in an extraordinary alliance to demand an eight-hour workday, at a time when American workers toiled an average of 10 or more hours daily, six days a week.
The call for shorter hours was rooted in a big idea: that workers’ days belonged to them, even if employers owned their workplaces and paid for their work. The labor activism of the late 1800s still casts a distant light on Labor Day today, carrying a vital message about the struggle for control of workers’ daily lives.
Led by socialist-leaning trade unions, Labor Day’s founders included skilled, native-born craft workers, immigrant laborers and revolutionary anarchists.
They chose Sept. 5, 1882, for the first Labor Day to coincide with a general assembly in New York of what was then the largest and broadest association of American workers, the Knights of Labor. Two years later, labor leaders moved the annual event to the first Monday in September, giving the majority of workers a two-day weekend for the first time.
I’m a historian at the University of Illinois Chicago, where I study the history of labor. My students come from working-class, mostly immigrant families, and my office is about 12 blocks from where the eight-hour movement reached a bloody climax in the battle of Haymarket Square. May Day commemorates that battle.
On May 1, 1886, unions of skilled workers organized by their trades led a nationwide general strike for the eight-hour day. They were joined by radical socialists, militant anarchists and many members of the Knights of Labor.
The most dramatic demonstrations took place in Chicago, where nearly 40,000 striking workers shut down much of the burgeoning industrial, agricultural and commercial hub. Three days later, a bomb thrown at a rally in Haymarket Square killed seven police officers, sparking a sweeping nationwide crackdown on labor activism.
In 1889, trade unions and workers’ parties meeting in Paris for the first congress of a new Socialist International proclaimed May 1 an international workers’ holiday. They were partly following the lead of the new American Federation of Labor, which had called for renewed strikes on the anniversary of the 1886 action.
Though May 1 had long been associated with European celebrations of springtime, its modern meaning has deeper American roots that precede the Haymarket tragedy. It was on that date in 1867 that workers in Chicago celebrated an earlier victory.
At the end of the Civil War, campaigns for an eight-hour workday arose in cities across the country, championing a common interpretation of the abolition of slavery: For many workers, emancipation meant that employers purchased only their labor, not their lives.
The movement led to laws declaring an eight-hour day in six states, including Illinois, where the new rule took effect on May 1, 1867.
Employers widely disobeyed or circumvented the laws, and states failed to enforce them while they lasted, so workers continued to struggle for a shorter workday.
Labor leaders said shorter hours would create more jobs, boost hourly pay and leave more time for workers’ education, organization and political action. The fight for the eight-hour day encapsulated workers’ wider struggle to control their own time, both on and off the job.
In the 20th century, labor unions won shorter hours for many of their members across the country. But they detached that demand from the broader agenda of workers’ autonomy and international solidarity.
They gained a landmark achievement with the federal enactment of the eight-hour day for many industries during the 1930s. At that point, economist John Maynard Keynes projected the rising productivity of labor would enable 21st-century wage earners to work just three hours a day.
Workers’ productivity did keep climbing as Keynes predicted, but their work hours did not decline, leaving the three-hour day a forgotten vision of what organized labor might achieve.
Jeffrey Sklansky is professor of history at the University of Illinois Chicago.
A version of this article appeared on The Conversation, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to sharing the insights of academic researchers.