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Today, many Americans are celebrating Labor Day even though most of the world celebrates Labor Day on 1 May. The origins of Labor Day in the US tell us a lot about American politics.

The catalyst for designating a day honoring working people was the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago on 4 May 1886. The Encyclopedia of Chicago gives a great overview of the event:

“On May 1, 1886, Chicago unionists, reformers, socialists, anarchists, and ordinary workers combined to make the city the center of the national movement for an eight-hour day. Between April 25 and May 4, workers attended scores of meetings and paraded through the streets at least 19 times. On Saturday, May 1, 35,000 workers walked off their jobs. Tens of thousands more, both skilled and unskilled, joined them on May 3 and 4. Crowds traveled from workplace to workplace urging fellow workers to strike. Many now adopted the radical demand of eight hours’ work for ten hours’ pay. Police clashed with strikers at least a dozen times, three with shootings.

“At the McCormick reaper plant, a long-simmering strike erupted in violence on May 3, and police fired at strikers, killing at least two. Anarchists called a protest meeting at the West Randolph Street Haymarket, advertising it in inflammatory leaflets, one of which called for “Revenge!”

“The crowd gathered on the evening of May 4 on Des Plaines Street, just north of Randolph, was peaceful, and Mayor Carter H. Harrison, who attended, instructed police not to disturb the meeting. But when one speaker urged the dwindling crowd to “throttle” the law, 176 officers under Inspector John Bonfield marched to the meeting and ordered it to disperse.

“Then someone hurled a bomb at the police, killing one officer instantly. Police drew guns, firing wildly. Sixty officers were injured, and eight died; an undetermined number of the crowd were killed or wounded.”

No one knows who threw the bomb, but many felt that the situation was dangerous and demanded a response to the threat posed by “communists, socialists, and anarchists.” Such fears were not confined just to the US. Many in Germany, for example, felt the same fear of the working class but the response in Germany was to establish a social safety net to address the needs of workers. But in the US eight of the leaders of the protests were tried and sentenced to death despite the complete absence of evidence linking any of them to the bomb.

The Haymarket Massacre only served to enflame the workers and they continued to press for an 8-hour workday and other concessions. The pressure led to another massacre, this time in 1894. Jonah Walters explains the sequence of events:

“In 1894, President Grover Cleveland pushed Congress to establish the holiday as a way to de-escalate class tension following the Pullman Strike, during which as many as ninety workers were gunned down by thousands of US Marshals serving at the pleasure of railway tycoon George Pullman, one of the time’s most hated industrial barons.

“A few months earlier, the Pullman Palace Car Company — a prominent manufacturer of railway cars — drastically cut wages and laid off a number of workers at their Chicago factory. Four thousand workers — many of whom lived in the company town of Pullman, IL and were further outraged by high rents — went on wildcat strike.

“In an impressive display of working-class solidarity, more than 150,000 railroad workers in 27 states joined the strike in the weeks that followed, refusing to switch, signal, or service trains pulling Pullman cars. Suddenly, with all trains at a standstill, the railway system was under the control of the American Railroad Union, then led by Eugene V. Debs.

“President Cleveland conveniently invoked the executive responsibility to deliver mail to claim the strike was illegal and unjustified because the US Postal Service relied on train travel. He mustered a heavily armed force of more than 14,000 US Marshals, soldiers, and mercenaries to break the strike. After days of fighting and more than 30 workers killed, the strikers were dispersed and trains began to move.

“The Pullman Strike was one of the most catalyzing moments in American history, leading working people all over the country to draw revolutionary conclusions — including Debs, who read Marx for the first time while imprisoned for his role in organizing the strike.

“Cleveland was wary of the response to his actions. He signed Labor Day into law a mere six days after busting the strike.”

Fears of communism plagued the US throughout the 20th century, leading to the Palmer Raids in the 1920s and the “Red Scare” incited by Senator Joe McCarthy. President Eisenhower declared 1 May to be celebrated as “Loyalty Day” to divert attention from the May Day celebrations being held in many of the Communist countries.

There is an increase in union activity in the US right now, but its effect on the American economy is hard to measure. National Public Radio points out that there has been an increase in union membership in the US, but that increase has not kept pace with the recent increase in the total number of jobs in the US:

“Last week, researchers at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR School) released the school’s annual report tracking labor actions across America. Alexander Colvin, the dean of the ILR school, says the data shows that something real was bubbling in the labor movement last year. They find that strikes, for example, were up 52% in 2022 over the previous year. However, considering we live in a nation with roughly 160 million workers, the absolute number of labor actions last year remains pretty small: 424 work stoppages (417 strikes and seven lockouts). Even the authors of the ILR School report note, ‘the level of strike activity is lower than earlier historical eras. The number of work stoppages and approximate number of workers involved in work stoppage is considerably less than the most recent comprehensive BLS data from the 1970s.'”

It remains to be seen whether the strong verbal support of unions by President Biden is enough to protect the interests of workers. But the US remains an outlier among economically developed nations in terms of worker support.