May 1st – Labor Day (Día del Trabajo)

 
The Día del Trabajo (Labor Day) is a Mexican federal statutory holiday.  Employees are entitled to a day off with pay plus overtime compensation if they are required to work on the Día del Trabajo.  Banks, schools, government offices, and many businesses will be closed.  The Mexican flag is flown at full staff on the Día del Trabajo in the manner provided for under the Ley sobre el Escudo, Bandera y el Himno Nacionales (Law on the National Arms, Flag, and Anthem).    

The Día del Trabajo  (internationally called May Day) holiday is celebrate in Mexico on May 1st (Primero de Mayo).  When it falls on a Saturday workers are given another day off (usually Friday if it falls on a Saturday and Monday if it falls on a Sunday).

May Day is a day of great importance to communist, socalist, and other liberal groups.  El Día del Trabajo (Labor Day) is often a time of political rallies and demonstrations.   On one May Day, when Vicente Fox was president of Mexico, over 90,000 workers showed up for a rally organized by union leaders to protest Mexican labor laws.

 
International Labor Day
Although it is not celebrated in the United States and Canada, May 1st  in Mexico and much of the world is celebrated as International Labor Day and is often called May Day.   Many of the events that resulted in the origin of this holiday occured in the United States.

The May 1st, International Labor Day origination was heavily influenced by two things. The first was the passing of a resolution of the Organized Trades and Labor Unions by the United States and Canada that established the 8 hour work day.  The second event was the Haymarket riot on May 4th 1886 in Chicago.  

In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions passed a resolution stating that eight hours would constitute a legal day’s work from and after May 1, 1886. The resolution called for a general strike (meaning a strike of all workers at all workplaces) to achieve the goal, since years of lobbying and legislative methods had already failed. By April 1886, 250,000 workers across the United States were involved in the May Day movement.  

The heart of the movement was in Chicago, organized primarily by the anarchist International Working People’s Association which believed in ending of capitalism.  The movement was based in the working class immigrant communities of the city, mainly among Germans, and was centered around a radical community that included daily and weekly newspapers in several languages, cultural clubs, youth groups, choirs, sports teams and especially labor unions.  

Businesses and the government were alarmed by the increasingly radical character of the movement. and prepared accordingly. By May 1st, the movement had already won gains for many Chicago clothing cutters, shoemakers, and packing-house workers. Many participated in strikes and hundreds of thousands--estimated between 300,000 and 1 million--participated in marches on May 1, 1996.

On Monday, May 3, 1886, the first workday after the national eight-hour strike, a riot broke out at a labor protest held outside of Chicago's McCormick Reaper Works, where the striking workers of the McCormick factory had assembled to heckle the non-union workers or “scabs” brought in to replace them.  The demonstration became increasingly violent the police intervened to protect the non-union workers.  In suppressing the riot the police fired on the strikers killing six and wounding others.  (Historians disagree on the exact number  killed and  wounded.)

On May 4, 1996 a rally of about 3000 members of the anarchist movement assembled to protest the actions of the police the preceding day at the McCromick Reaper Works Factory strike (or riot depending on one’s viewpoint).  Initially the demonstration proceeded without incident, and by the time the last speaker was on the platform the rainy gathering was already breaking up, with only a few hundred people remaining.  At that time a squad of about 180 police officers ordered the meeting to disperse.  As the speakers left the platform, a bomb was thrown at the police, killing one and injuring seventy. Police responded by firing into the crowd, killing one worker and injuring others.  

As result of what happened (described above) in 1886 May Day has become a major holiday with political overtones throughout the world, except in the United States and Canada.  May Day is a day of great importance to communists, socialists, and other leftist groups as well as being a day on which they often hold political marches and rallies.