San Francisco Bay Area Speak Out Socialists recently organized a celebration of May Day, or International Workers Day. Friends, coworkers, and comrades gathered to watch recorded greetings from activists in different parts of the world, hear a history of May Day and its relevance to our struggles today, and enjoy spoken word and musical performances. We shared food, drinks, and community on the one holiday we, as workers, can truly call our own.
At the celebration, a healthcare worker presented a short history of May Day. Here is their speech:
As we heard earlier from our comrades around the world, May Day, which is also known as International Workers’ Day, is truly an international holiday. Over 160 countries officially recognize May Day, making it one of the few holidays that transcend religion or national boundaries, serving to unite the working class around the world.
But you might not even know about this international holiday if you live here in the United States, where May Day is not a federal holiday, and is generally not even acknowledged outside of protest movements and socialist organizations. Instead, the US government, the bosses, and some union officials made the choice to cut us off from the rest of the international working class, and designate “Labor Day” in September as a concession. American Labor Day is, at best, an acknowledgement of the historic successes of labor unions, but in practice is a celebration of the dwindling days of summer. A politician might give a speech in which they recognize the past contributions of labor unions, but their words are often framed in the concept that the unions’ work is distinctly in the past. Now that we have some labor laws, minimal safety standards, and mandated fire alarms in our workplaces, Labor Day’s focus is turned away from the global solidarity of the working class, and instead turned towards mattress sales and back-to-school shopping.
So it may surprise people here in this country, who might never have even heard of May Day or International Workers Day, to learn that the holiday actually had its origins right here in the United States. As industrialization spread across the country in the 1800s, working conditions deteriorated as bosses sought to extract as much labor as possible out of workers for poverty wages. Work weeks often stretched to 60 or 70 hours, and by the 1880s, workers across the country were organizing and rallying together in the push for an 8-hour workday.
Workers gathered to sing the “8 Hour Song,” which goes:
We meant to make things over
we’re tired of toil for naught
But bare enough to live on:
never an hour for thought.
We want to feel the sunshine;
we want to smell the flowers;
We’re sure that God has willed it,
and we mean to have eight hours.
We’re summoning our forces
from shipyard, shop, and mill:
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will!
May 1, 1886 was chosen as the day to strike, and on that day, 340,000 workers stopped work in 12,000 work places nationwide.
In Chicago, a major center of working class activity, tensions were high. An estimated 100,000 workers, in a city of around 800,000, took to the streets on that first May Day, marching and shutting down businesses throughout the city. Activity continued into the week and on May 3rd, hundreds of workers showed up to support the ongoing strike at the McCormick Reaper Works. Police fired into the crowd, killing four people and wounding many more.
The next day at Haymarket Square, as thousands of people rallied to protest the killings, the police charged the crowd and a bomb was detonated. The police again fired into the crowd, killing several people and wounding hundreds more. Eight anarchists were arrested for the bombing, and despite a lack of evidence, four were hanged by the state. One refused to have his life taken by the enemy and committed suicide in jail. The three remaining anarchists were sent to prison, but pardoned six years later due to a lack of evidence.
The Haymarket massacre led to an outpouring of support from workers around the world, who saw these men as martyrs who gave their lives for the vision of the 8-hour workday. Their story resonated across the globe, as one of workers who were risking their lives, not for wealth or power, but for the ability to feel sunshine and smell flowers, to experience life as human beings instead of toiling all their waking hours in a factory.
This worldwide recognition of class struggle, labor solidarity, and the response to the violence of state repression led to the creation of the Socialist International, a federation of the world’s socialist organizations, in 1889. At one of its early meetings it formally recognized May 1 as an international day of working class solidarity, and it was officially recognized as “International Workers’ Day” in countries across the globe.
Although the history of May Day may have faded from our memory here in the US, the fight is clearly not over, as living and working conditions for workers continue to decline. We may have won the standard of an 8-hour workday, but more and more US workers are working multiple jobs because the paycheck from a 40-hour workweek no longer pays the bills. As prices go up, but wages stay the same, you may have the legal right to an 8-hour workday, but that’s small comfort when you have to drive for Uber in your off hours to make rent. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, even when factoring in higher state and local minimum wages, the average minimum wage worker in the US must work 95 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom apartment. So much for the 8-hour workday!
But what happens when the cost of housing simply exceeds what a worker can earn at their job? Ultimately they join the ever-increasing number of Americans living without permanent shelter. The current estimate from the US Interagency Council on Homelessness is that almost half of homeless people have paying jobs, but simply aren’t paid enough to secure housing.
It may be tempting to think that our current situation is not comparable to the conditions of factory workers living in the 1800s, but has anyone seen what’s happening in Florida lately? Just last month, the Florida state legislature advanced a bill that would allow teenagers as young as 14 years old to work overnight shifts on school nights, in addition to rolling back mandated meal breaks for child workers. This rollback of child labor laws was proposed as a solution to the labor shortage caused by the recent threats and deportations imposed on immigrant workers. The US immigrant workforce does some of the most physically demanding work for the lowest wages. Undocumented workers make up over 5% of the US workforce, often earning less than minimum wage, and experiencing exploitative and inhumane working conditions.
Whether documented or not, US workers are not blind to the fact that their quality of life is declining. As the Elon Musks of the world concentrate extreme wealth in the hands of a few, the rest of us are working harder just to get by. Companies are reporting record profits but this increased productivity is not reflected in our paychecks or our standard of living. On top of that, federal taxes, which we might hope would be used to build up our society, instead go to building up the most expensive military force in the world. The US currently spends more on their military than the next 9 countries combined. Workers who are struggling to make ends meet, to pay for basic necessities like food and housing, have no say in the chunk of their paycheck used to drop expensive bombs on civilians in Gaza.
People across the US are speaking up that the current situation is not sustainable, and they are seeking an outlet to stand up and fight for a better life. Just last month, an estimated 3-5 million people rallied in “Hands Off” protests that were held in 1200 locations, across all 50 states. On his “Fighting Oligarchy Tour,” Senator Bernie Sanders has gathered crowds of tens of thousands of people in traditionally Republican districts. And this week on May 1st, massive protests took place around the world, and also here in this country, with over 1000 cities nationwide hosting May Day events. People rallied in the streets, not just here where you might expect it in the Bay Area or LA, but at events in Norman, Oklahoma, Sauk City, Wisconsin, and Hendersonville, North Carolina – small communities that all overwhelmingly voted for Trump. According to Joseph McCartin, a professor of labor history at Georgetown, “nothing like this has ever occurred on a May Day in the US in the past – in terms of the breadth of these protests around the country, in terms of the variety of them, in terms of the different constituencies that they’ve mobilized.”
People are recognizing that the current system is not working for them, and are looking for answers in how we could build a better world for working people.
So let’s start here, now, celebrating together and taking back May Day as our day, the day of working people everywhere. When we think back on that first May Day, as workers fought for their vision of the 8 hour workday, let’s share together our vision for what the world could look like if we stood up and fought for a better life for working people around the world.
Drew Sage, a Bay Area poet, spoken word, and recording artist shared with us this poem:
May Day
It must be May 1st optimum day for workers to display worth
Join hands and expand around the world and survey girth
Quite often the cacophony of variety leads to an array burst
Relishing and embellishing past examples hittin’ pay dirt
Demonstrations led to police battles with tactical on display
Historical samples of examples throw the irrational drama away
Moments that foment more than just a fashionable entrée
An elevation of celebration an international holiday
Embroiled and toiled with Chicago Police a forewarned scuffle
Bosses with a law enforcement endorsement a tightly formed couple
Prestigious with exploited riches a sanctioned, adorned hustle
Revolutionary spirit torn from the rubble born out of struggle
12-hours plus is what soured the trust only owners are pain-free daily
Even when they express concern stress in turn lesson learned aim seems shady
Killed four workers wounded seventy their identity labelled mainstream crazies
More than just hyperbole in adversity 8-hour workday from the 1880’s
Out of their feelings late to the game emotionless and tardy
Glorious victorious inertia to try and dispose of this — hardly
Not bought out but well thought out to approach this smartly
Capitalists mortified by workers organized sparked by socialist parties
Political asylum is an astonishing sabbatical prism
One of the many intrepid methods admonishing radicalism
Considering reformist buffering opposed to restructuring is like coddling impractical wisdom
Instead of extend the cult the end result should be abolishing capitalism
A direct response to worker exploitation
The sensation of a foundation — pre-cursor demonstrations
Rejected supposed bargaining — mergers with stipulations
Designed a mint with the fine print and no further explanations
Employers ragin’ on this joyous occasion reminder of potential power
Pretending like they can’t hear our chants in their provincial towers
We are the peasants in the eleventh essential hour
Preventing big business from having the existential devoured
Quite pitiful how individuals amass industries
We gain assurance and endurance from our past histories
Enough to be racking up and stacking up working class victories
We’ve travelled far battle-scarred marching down the path gingerly
Or on all accounts small amounts ready to pounce like caged panthers
Who never relied on the contrived assuaged banter
Our simple questions — their thousand-paged answers
Fought for a model to follow minimum wage standards
We’ve dealt with characters that have racy connections
With big stick walkin’ slick talkin’ union heads with hasty suggestions
Arbitrators and judges stenches from benches and flakey rejections
Never easy to create and liberate through workplace safety protections
No time to get soft core and consider this a lost war
Billionaire bosses acting like rockstars off tour
Minimized taxes maximized profits products still cost more
No exceptions concessions are not given but fought for
The Haves spar tough that’s why battles are rough
Not enough to be starstruck over the amount of union cards up
Global workers over 3 billion participants consisting of millions of immigrants
Inherent built-in incidents make us feel like we’re fill-in indigents
The fact we’re hindered by corporate interests makes us sort of kindred
Forming a union led to constant bombardment — reported endless
This exemplifies individualists are subjected to lies
Hoping the rest comply but to collectivize will rectify
Enough already with the analogy of boot straps for those who lack
Coming from the same ones that will spew obtuse facts describing a tariff as a use tax
It’s proving time if you’re doing fine you’re stuck in a consuming bind
Time to focus more on humankind and not remain human blind
No more war or poverty but true sovereignty
No more racism or hunger as corporations plunder
Homes for everyone and mental instability will give way to mental ability
No more political corruption no more climate critical disruption
