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

Bill Petro
5 min readSep 4, 2020

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.

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Bill Petro
Bill Petro

Written by Bill Petro

Historian, technologist, blogger/podcaster. Ex-Silicon Valley tech exec. Author of articles on history, tech, pop culture, & travel. https://billpetro.com

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