Happy May Day

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy May Day.

Yes, I know that's supposed to be on the 1st of May, but this is the United States of America, and we do things differently here. Ironically, the rest of the world (excepting Canada, South Africa, and those that simply don't have any such holiday) celebrates labor on a date inspired by events in the U.S. We, however, do not.

The event was the Haymarket riot in Chicago, which grew out of a strike on 1 May 1886. The workers were protesting peacefully for an 8-hour workday, when someone (probably an anarchist) threw a bomb and killed a police officer, and a riot ensued. Several labor organisers were blamed and executed, which sparked outrage in the international labor movement. May Day, also known as International Labour Day, was born.

Meanwhile, back in the States, the previous few years the Knights of Labor had been staging a parade honoring labor in early September. The domestic outrage over the Haymarket executions was leading to the creation of an American holiday honoring labor. But president Grover Cleveland (among others in goverment) didn't want the American labor movement getting associated (in their minds or anyone else's) with the international socialist movement. So he picked the date of the Knights' event for the official holiday.

Apparently it worked, because today organised labor in the U.S. certainly don't identify themselves with socialism. Heck, the typical union member would punch your lights out if you implied that he was a socialist. (Of course the anti-communist propaganda of the Cold War had a lot to do with that.) May Day is mostly unknown, and if it is, it's usually thought of as a Soviet holiday. And Labor Day now has little to do with organised labor. It's just one of the two summer bookend holidays and a three-day weekend. It's as much a holiday for management as it is for labor.

In fact, I'm getting gently screwed over by it. My job is only 32 hours/week, which sounds like just the sort of thing the Haymarket protesters were trying to make possible. But in reality, it's a ploy by my employer to justify not providing me with standard benefits, such as insurance, paid vacations... or paid holidays. But my work place is closed today, which means that if I want a full week's pay, I need to put in extra hours the other four days this week. So I "get" the day off, but I have to make up the hours. It's a lock-out, not a holiday. Granted, it isn't a major hardship, but it is a nuisance. And definitely not what the Haymarket boys had in mind.