Posts Tagged ‘Haymarket Square’
Sunday, September 1st, 2013
Think Maypole? Yes, but, there is so much more. May Day started in the U.S. in the late 1880′s to commemorate the struggle by workers to shorten 10-16 hour workdays to 8-hours. At its 1884 national convention in Chicago, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (the future AFL), proclaimed that “eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886.” The federation called for workers to negotiate with their employers for an eight-hour workday and, if that failed, to call a general strike on May 1 in support of the demand. The terrible aftermath of that first May Day 1886 in Chicago, the Haymarket massacre, would convince politicians and businesses to move labor events to Labor Day in September so the memory of what happened in 1886 would be erased from public memory.