Dear reader. We wish you a happy Labor Day. Every May 1st we celebrate this tribute to all those workers who fought so hard for a more just and egalitarian future. It also goes for all active workers who strive for the proper functioning of the rules governing the employer-employee relationship.
And above all, it is celebrated by those who suffer daily the consequences of the lack or non-fulfillment of rights -sometimes- taken for granted in the western world. It is our duty to serve as a beacon of hope for these people who have had the misfortune to be born in territories where a few have managed to restrict freedoms at the cost of their economic benefit.
This day of rest offers us a great opportunity for reflection.
Workers have achieved great things. But it can’t stop there. You must continue. It is true that there is a lot to be proud of. But it would be audacious not to give a voice to a large part of the world’s workers who constantly experience labor exploitation, which is a fatal mark on their lives.
Everything that has been so hard to achieve can vanish in a few moments. Those who call a wage improvement, a reduction of working hours, the establishment of firm rules to protect the worker, utopian, do not see it appropriate to claim this day. What it demonstrates is an ignorance of the history of the people who risked their lives for a shred of what we have now. The history of those who walked with honor towards pending utopias. To make matters worse, it turns a deaf ear to the harsh reality.
Gender wage inequality continues to exist. There are still businessmen who take advantage of the ignorance of some humble and honest workers.
The past shows us that without revolution and struggle for workers’ rights, sometimes not without violence, progress would not have been possible. Fortunately, history itself has provided us with democratic tools that open the doors to peaceful change. Elaborated through laws that ensure due compliance with labor rights and, where appropriate, improve them.
We can conclude that it is of vital importance to master history in order to understand the present and its challenges.
That is why we tell you the reason why the workers’ day we celebrate today has its date on May 1st. We hope that this history will serve as a starting point to explore the biography of labor law.
THE MARTYRS OF CHICAGO
“The Chicago Martyrs” were a group of trade unionists who initiated, on May 1, 1886, a strike in which they demanded the right to limit their workday to 8 hours. At that time, factories in both Europe and the United States imposed insufferable working hours on their workers, which could be as long as 16 hours.
A few years earlier, the intellectual Karl Marx had already described the problems this caused for the working class. For the German sociologist, these working conditions meant that the individual completely lost the ability to control his own life. The worker subjected to these conditions was not free, since he was at the mercy of the orders of a superior who dehumanized him by turning him into a mere means of the production process.
This group of workers was executed after starting their strike. The news prompted thousands of workers to go out in protest in various cities that year. The pressure of more than 80,000 employees succeeded in imposing their guidelines on the employers: “Eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep and eight hours for home”.
The protests were not without violence. On the third day after the above-mentioned execution, one of the participants in the demonstration threw a bomb at the police, who were trying to suppress the demonstrators by applying force. The explosive killed one agent and injured six others. The “Haymarket Revolt,” so it has gone down in history, was instrumental in remembering May Day in the years that followed.
The anarchists who had organized the protests were severely punished. Five of the accused were hanged in November of the following year. They were convicted even though their participation in the demonstrations could not even be proven. On May 1, 1890, thousands of people demonstrated in the United States and the most advanced countries of Europe in memory of the Chicago martyrs. The success of the call meant that many governments began to take this “social issue” into consideration.
The organizers of this day proposed to repeat this day of remembrance and vindication the following year. This was the basis for the establishment of this now permanent date in the calendar. Surprisingly, in the United States Labor Day is not celebrated on this day, but on the first of September, as it is the unofficial end of summer vacation.
