History of Labor Day: Why Isn’t It May 1st Like Other Countries?

Labor Day is the day we celebrate the process our mothers went through to deliver us at birth. Sorry, wrong holiday. Labor Day in the U.S. is the day we celebrate the achievements of the American labor movement. While it is still disputed whether the holiday was first proposed by Peter J. McGuire, the general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters, or Matthew Maguire, a machinist and secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York — observances of the holiday go back over a century in the U.S.

First Celebration

The first Labor Day celebration was September 5, 1882, in New York City and was organized by the Central Labor Union. The legislature of New York first deliberated a bill to establish a regular holiday, but Oregon was the first to pass it on February 21, 1887. It was first proposed as “a street parade to exhibit to the public the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations.”

In other countries, it’s often celebrated as International Workers’ Day on May Day. The U.S. does not observe it on May 1st for at least two reasons. The more recent one is that May 1 became associated with the Russian Revolution and Communism. But the more critical part of the backstory starts with the Chicago Haymarket Affair of 1886.

Labor Day Backstory

The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions had stated in 1884 that labor reform and the 8-hour workday would begin on May 1 in 1866. They had two years to implement it. On May 1, 1886, some 80,000 workers marched up Michigan Avenue in Chicago, arm-in-arm, carrying their Union banners. Some estimate that the total strike ranged from 300,000 to half a million workers. Two days later, on May 3rd, things turned violent. The Chicago police killed several striking workers at the McCormick Reaper Plant.

This, in turn, precipitated a protest meeting that was planned for Haymarket Square on May 4th. At the end of this meeting that night, there was an altercation between about 200 people and 176 police officers. An unknown assailant dropped a dynamite bomb, panic shooting began, and police killed some of their own men. Four workers and seven police officers’ deaths resulted from the shooting and bomb; dozens…