2019 International Workers' Day or May Day Wednesday May 01,2019

International Workers' Day or Labour Day or May Day is celebrated on May 1every year in most of the countries, including India.

Also known as May Day, the day marks the acceptance of maximum 8 hours as an employee’s official working hours in a day and honours the sacrifices and protests of workers during the 19th century.

Although May Day is not a gazetted holiday in India, many states observe it as a public holiday

Know the Blood-soaked History Behind Eight-hour Workday

The 8-hour workday that has now become a standard labour practice worldwide owes its origin to bloody protests for addressing workers’ dismal plight due to long working hours and condtions in the United States.


Workers had started agitating for a shortened workday as early as the 1860s but it was mid 1880s that the Federation of Organized Trades and Labour Unions of the United States and Canada chose May 1, 1886, to mark the first day on which an eight-hour workday would go into effect.

When that day arrived, thousands of American workers went on a well-coordinated and largely nonviolent strike.

Two days later, workers in Chicago, an epicenter of the strike, tried to confront “strikebreakers” at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. At least two workers were killed in police firing.

On May 4, seven police officers and at least four civilians were killed as a grenade was thrown at police personnel trying disperse the protesting workers in Chicago's Haymarket Square.

Eight “anarchists” arrested by the police arrested were convicted of conspiracy; seven were sentenced to death and one to 15 years imprisonment. While four were hanged, one committed suicide and two others had their sentences commuted to life in prison.

The ‘Haymarket affair’ lent impetus to the labour movement and. Subsequently, in 1989, the Second International— an international organisation for workers and socialists— declared May 1 as International Workers' Day.

The eight-hour work day wasn't recognised in the US until it was turned into law in 1916, following years of strikes and protests by workers.

The following year, four days after the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian monarchy, the eight-hour workday was introduced in the country by official decree.