Every first of May the whole world commemorates the Labor Daya date marked by the struggle of the workers and the death of a group of them that in 1886 rebelled to ask for fairer working hours.
And it is that in 1886 the working days were from Monday to Monday with 16 hours a day, an unsustainable situation that launched a protest to reduce their daily work time to eight. However, the revolt dissipated and a group of workers was captured who were held responsible for bomb blast and then sentenced to hang.
Despite the struggles that had taken place years before to improve working conditions, it was not until May 1 that a strike began in Chicago, the industrial city in the United States, and which later spread throughout the United States, managing to unite some 350,000 workers on the streets.
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Such was the reception that after being repressed by the police, they met again on May 4 in Haymarket Squarewhere under strange circumstances there was an explosion that left a policeman dead and several injured.
The fact left the capture of eight people who were judged, of them five were sentenced to death and the other three were taken to jail. This group of protesters are known as the ‘martyrs of Chicago’.
May Day, Labor Day
It was not until 1889 when, at a Congress of the Second International in Paris, the Labor Day to commemorate the ‘martyrs of Chicago’.
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However, in The United States and Canada did not abide by this date and established another for Labor Dayleaving it for the first Monday in September, as President Grover Cleveland feared that the change to May Day would strengthen the socialist movements that arose in that country.
