In a world hit by an exceptional pandemic, workers around the world miss the celebration of May Day or International Workers' Day. Historically it has been celebrated in many places, and bloody manifestations of claiming their rights in other places.
In Cuba, only after the triumph of the revolution on January 1, 1959, the workers fully achieved all their rights and May day became a source of national joy, with millions of people parading up defending the socialist revolution.
But many do not remember the origin of that memorable date, even as Eduardo Galeano said, in Chicago there is no monument that remembers it.
Knowing history allows us to understand the present, and honor those who deserve honor.
Origins of May Day
International Workers' Day or May Day is the party, by the time, of the World Workers' Movement. Since its establishment, in most countries (although the consideration of a holiday was in many cases late) by agreement of the Socialist Workers' Congress of the Second International, held in Paris in 1889, it is a day of vindication, classist affirmation and homage to the Chicago Martyrs.
The fundamental appeal of American workers, starting in the second half of the 19th century, was the reduction of working hours, which in those years could last up to 16 hours a day. Small union successes by some guilds, isolated from each other, managed to reduce it to eight hours. However, the economic crisis of 1873 and the long depression that followed and lasted six years gave way to the advances made.
From 1880 on, the movement for the reduction of working hours resurfaced more strongly. At the beginning of this decade the emphasis lay on legislative action, but it soon became clear that if the working class wanted to achieve the eight-hour day, it would have to do so on its own; that is, through the power of strikes.
It was the Federation of Organized Crafts and Trade Unions of the United States and Canada that started the big eight-hour struggle. At its 1884 convention, the federation adopted a historic resolution, introduced by Gabriel Edmonston of the federation of carpenters and cabinetmakers, which set the eight hours as a day.
Edmonston may have chosen that day for that associate with the carpenters' guild and other groups of the building branch. For many years these workers used to meet at this time of year when construction began.
During the winter, jobs were scarce and workers worked for the wages offered to them. In each spring, these same workers came together in organizational spirits and over time, this meeting took the form of a parade. After the long winter, construction unions revived again. As a result, employers were expected to pay the wages demanded by the unions from time to time and observe all the conditions required as long as they had their work stopped for a strike.
As a carpenter who was Edmonston, he realized that May 1 was a good day to conquer the long-awaited claim of shorter days.
The patrons' newspapers and spokesmen declared that the eight-hour day was communism, sordid and rampant, which would encourage laziness and play, mutiny, unemployment and alcoholism and would only mean lower wages, greater poverty and social degradation for workers. This did not impress the workers and they sang the eight-hour songs.
On 14 July 1889, on the centenary of the takeover of the Bastille (beginning of the French Revolution), the leaders of the socialist movements of many countries, meeting in Paris for the inaugurated congress of the Second International, decided to unify actions to achieve the eight-hour day and also declared that the first of May was celebrated on International Labour Day and called for an international demonstration to take place by this date of the following year.
On 1 May 1890 he brought with him one of the most powerful labor demonstrations that had been witnessed in the world until then.
From this came the Haymarket incident, or Haymarket massacre or Haymarket revolt that took place in Haymarket Square (Chicago, United States) on May 4, 1886 and was the highlight of a series of protests that had occurred since May 1 had occurred in support of striking workers, to claim the 8-hour workday. During a peaceful demonstration, an unknown person dropped a bomb on police trying to violently disband the act. This led to a trial, years later described as illegitimate and deliberately malicious, by doing eight workers qualified as anarcho-collectivist and anarcho-communists, where five of them were sentenced to death (one of them committed suicide before being executed) and three were held. They were called Chicago Martyrs by the Labor Movement.
This later led to the commemoration of 1 May, originally by the labor movement, and is now considered the International Workers' Day in the vast majority of the world's countries. Two notable exceptions, the United States and Canada, celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday of September.
TODAY Hundreds of mass demonstrations commemorated Workers' Day in Greece, in pandemic conditions, applying protective measures (distances, masks, etc.) and despite the government's decision to move Workers' Day to mid-May. The trade unions organized strike demonstrations in all major cities in Greece and central Athens, as well as in many of its neighbourhoods. On the eve, union leaders and Communist Party of Greece (KKE) cadrs visited workplaces and spoke to workers.
In its May 1st message to the country's working class, the KKE Central Committee points out, among other things:
"The coronavirus will heal and the pandemic will pass, as others have done in the past, but capitalism is incurable and will continue to torment humanity, with poverty, unemployment, wars, the destruction of the environment, until people decide to move to the forefront of development. The current system can only be overthrown and replaced by a superior social system, socialism-communism, where social ownership in the means of production with labor power, central scientific planning to meet popular needs, labor control in all administrative bodies, participation in all organs of power, from the bottom up, can lead to the well-being of the people, to the peace and progress of humanity. Labor Day symbolizes the irreducible claim against the class opponent. This is the precious legacy of our time. With this weapon in our hands and our thoughts, we honor Labor Day, the dead workers of Chicago in 1886, the tobacco workers of Thessaloniki in 1936, the 200 communists executed in Kaisariani on May 1, 1944, all the invincible of class struggle, those who sacrificed themselves for a society without exploitation of man for man. On this journey we continue, for the satisfaction of all contemporary social and popular needs. PROLETARIANS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNIES!"
TODAY in socialist Cuba, where workers own their rights, this first of May 2020 there will be no traditional colorful parades. From the homes, from the essential jobs fighting COVID-19, we will take care of health, and we will fight this pandemic. We will win and move on.
Long live May Day!!!
Embacuba Grecia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nlhInBzpgM