May Day, 2008
April 28, 2008 01:02 PM
May Day might not be a day off, but if there is a day to honour those who've struggled to improve the lives of working people, May Day is it.
The day was a rallying point in the world-wide campaign for the eight hour day in the late 19th century. But the events that etched the day into the labour movement's memory occurred in Chicago, in 1886.
See: May Day (wikipedia.org)
Haymarket Affair (wikipedia.org)
On May 1, 1886, 80,000 people marched down Michigan Avenue, Chicago in the first-ever modern May Day Parade, in support of the eight hour day, in the midst of a general strike.
But three days later, workers gathered in Chicago's Haymarket Square to protest the deaths of four strikers at the hands of city police the day before, during a fight with strike breakers and company thugs.
It was a peaceful rally. Chicago mayor Carter Harrison showed up to watch but went home early. The speakers - including August Spies and Samuel Fielden - decried the earlier violence and urged calm.
But as Fielden finished his speech, the police advanced on the rally, armed and in formation. Someone threw a bomb at the police line. It killed one police officer.
Mayhem ensued. Sixty officers were wounded along with an unknown number of civilians. Seven policemen and at least four workers were killed.
To this day, no one knows who threw the bomb. Many suspect it was a Pinkertons agent acting as an agent provocateur. Others suspected it was a disgruntled worker.
But no one - not even the prosecutors at the trials that followed - could make any connection between the death of constable Matthias Degan and the eight men charged with his murder at Haymarket, all of whom were prominent union leaders.
In what's considered one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in American history, a jury found all eight guilty and sentenced seven of them to death. Two men had their sentences commuted to life in prison. One committed suicide in jail. On Nov. 11, 1887, four men, August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel were hanged.
In contrast, more conservative unions in the United States - who had rejected the call for the eight hour day - were busy organizing their own holiday, which later became "Labour Day." US President Grover Cleveland recognized Labour Day in 1887, to avoid giving support to the more progressive May Day movement.
Later, after the Soviet Union adopted May Day, the US government designated the first of May as "Loyalty Day".
While we're never ones to pass up a chance at a parade or picnic of working people - we think we should support Labour Day events - we feel it's important to think of those workers who laid down their lives for the eight hour day and other basic labour standards that we now take for granted.
Corporate globalization is driving down wages world wide. Companies are shuttering profitable operations to find more profits elsewhere. In the face of this, we should remember how May Day started: 80,000 working people from all professions, trades and walks of life, coming together to seek the betterment of all on a street in Chicago.
CUPE is a community-based union we see how our work and our wages benefit those in manufacturing, resources, service industries, small businesses and professional roles, and how all of us pay taxes that in turn pay our wages. We see we are all interconnected.
Let us use May 1, 2008 to remember we are connected working people everywhere.
