May Day, which falls on May 1 each year, is an international day celebrating the working class which has often been marked by mass demonstrations and protests. This year, May Day will be particularly important for the growing anti-Trump movement, with big protests planned across the country.
All of the basic rights workers in the U.S. have today, like the eight-hour work day, were won through working-class struggle. As Trump attacks everything from the right to protest to federal workers’ right to bargain a union contract, the only force that will be able to stop him is the organized working class. The struggle against Trump and the billionaire class today must take lessons from the history of May Day, and use this May Day as a rallying point to unite the struggles against Trump’s attacks and build the strongest possible movement to oppose his divide-and-rule administration.
In the U.S., the history of May Day is closely linked with the fight for the eight-hour work day in particular. The campaign for an eight-hour day for all workers dates back to 1884, organized by a federation of craft unions that renamed itself as the AFL in 1886. The date of May 1 was chosen to commemorate a general strike call issued by the labor movement. This was met with all-out opposition from the capitalist class, including the framing of labor leaders for a bomb thrown at police officers in Haymarket Square in Chicago.
May Day faded as a holiday in the U.S. during the brutal attacks on the working class by the bosses during the late 20th century, which hollowed out the labor movement. President Grover Cleveland even established Labor Day as a separate holiday in September 1894 as a means of pointing away from the Haymarket Affair and cutting across the internationalism of May Day.
But May Day was revived in 2006 by the immigrant rights movement, when immigrant workers organized a mass strike along with a boycott and protests of millions. Today, May Day is both a celebration of the hard-won victories of the working class and a memorial of the brutal repression that workers have faced by daring to fight for a better life. The legacy of the fight for eight hours is a powerful reminder that workers are the ones who make society run, and when united, we have the power to shut it down.
How The Eight-Hour Day Was Won
The rise of industrial manufacturing in the U.S. in the 1800s gave way to the Gilded Age, an era marked by the reign of robber baron bosses and mass poverty. The development of new technology allowed production to reach new heights, which concentrated wealth in the hands of the few while relying on the cold-blooded exploitation of a growing population of workers, including new waves of immigrants, laboring in factories. Workers faced brutally long hours, harrowing sanitary conditions, and starvation wages. Pay was so low that a single worker could not earn enough to provide for their family for a year, which forced spouses and children into working as well. Entire families would often work together in the same factory, where 12-16 hour shifts seven days a week were common.
Working conditions were incredibly unsanitary and dangerous, with poor ventilation, lighting, sanitation, and frequent industrial accidents. Living conditions were just as bad—workers were forced to live in overcrowded, poorly-made company houses where the rent was extravagant compared to their wages. Yet, it was these very workers whose labor created the wealth going into the pockets of their bosses—creating clothing they could not afford to wear, growing food they could not afford to eat, and building houses they could not afford to live in. The struggle by the labor movement at that time won major gains which transformed working conditions, though many of these changes have been eroded away.
The labor movement at the time was growing internationally. In England, where the industrial revolution originated, the demand for an eight-hour work day emerged as early as 1817. Struggles for better working conditions and pay for all workers also emerged in France, Australia, and New Zealand in the mid-18th century. This grew into an international campaign demanding the eight-hour work day.
At first, unions tried a legislative approach, but any bills put forward calling for reduced working hours were bitterly opposed and fought with every dirty trick in the book. The bosses and capitalist politicians threatened that reducing working hours and abolishing child labor would collapse the global economy, similar to arguments raised against modest wage raises today. It soon became clear that it would be useless to wait for any legislation, which, even if passed, had no guarantee of being enforced. In order to win a genuine eight-hour work day with no loss in pay, workers would need to get organized and levy their full power by going on strike to force the bosses to concede.
The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, a coalition of unions that would later be renamed as the AFL, headed up this campaign. They set the date of May 1, 1886 to when the bosses needed to agree to the eight-hour day with no loss in pay, and organized a strike to enforce it. Organizers circulated their own press promoting the strike at risk of police shutting it down, and reached out to workers and unions everywhere. Workers set up strike committees and organized practice demonstrations and pickets. The most aggressive effort to organize was in Chicago, which was the center of a militant left-wing labor movement led by socialist and anarchist activists.
An organization called the Eight-Hour Association, representing a united coalition of different labor unions and political organizations fighting for the eight-hour day, led the charge in Chicago, and organized an eight-hour practice picket with over 25,000 workers. The campaign grew beyond just the immediate economic fight—it became coupled with demands for much further-reaching industrial change like union contracts and even socialism. Workers all across the country were energized at the prospect of fighting back and the campaign spread like wildfire. By mid-April 1886, almost a quarter of a million workers were involved in the movement.
However, not all union leadership was enthusiastic about building for strike action. The leadership of the Knights of Labor, the largest established federation of trade unions, actively ignored the invitation from the AFL to participate and sought to undermine the movement. They dismissed the need for strike action, instead urging their rank-and-file workers to write letters supporting the eight-hour day and to generally refuse to work more than eight-hours.
But while the leaders of the Knights of Labor wanted to stifle the growing support for widespread industrial action, their own rank-and-file were ready for more militant methods and energetically received the invitation to participate. They set up assemblies within the Knights of Labor in support of the Eight-Hour Association and put forward resolutions to fight for a May Day general strike. When May Day approached, the Knights of Labor leaders informed their members not to join the strike—effectively doing the bosses’ work for them! But their orders could not quell the growing tide of the hundreds of thousands of workers who were ready to fight.
On May 1, 1886, over 350,000 workers went on strike demanding “eight-hour day with no loss in pay!” Chicago, where 40,000 workers struck, was brought to its knees—every railway in the city was stalled, all freight houses shut down, and most industries paralyzed. The strike was an enormous success. Nearly 185,000 workers who went on strike gained their demand fully, and no less than 200,000 workers saw a significant reduction in their daily working hours. An estimated 45,000 won their demand without striking at all due to the strength of the national strike. Thousands of previously unorganized workers joined a union over the course of the struggle for eight hours—the strike itself proved to be a powerful organizing weapon.
The Haymarket Affair
The victory of the May Day strikes was fiercely opposed by the bosses, and they responded by attempting to crush the movement. This came to a head with the Haymarket Affair on May 4, 1886, where labor leaders were framed for a crime that was instigated by the police. Shortly after May 1 in Chicago, police fired without warning on a crowd of striking workers who were demonstrating against scabs outside the McCormick Harvester factory. Four workers were killed and many more were wounded.
To protest police brutality, tens of thousands of workers peacefully rallied in Haymarket Square, where labor leaders gave speeches. As the rally was settling down and the majority of workers had left, an armed squadron of police approached the square. As they commanded the already-dwindling crowd to disperse, a bomb was thrown into the police, killing one instantly. The police immediately opened fire on the crowd, killing an unknown number of workers, and injuring at least 200. Though the identity of who threw the bomb is still unknown, the Chicago chief of police would admit three years later to creating and infiltrating anarchist societies in order to plant bombs and ammunition.
The Haymarket affair was the perfect excuse for capitalists to destroy the struggle for eight hours and to attack the labor movement as a whole. The eight-hour movement became associated with “anarchists” and “bomb-throwers.” Workers were beaten, arrested, and tortured. Eight of the most militant labor leaders were arrested and put on trial for “conspiracy” and subjected to a jury composed entirely of factory foremen and superintendents. Four of them were sentenced to death: George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Albert Parsons, and August Spies.
After his sentencing, August Spies remarked “if you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement… the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who want in toil and misery expect salvation… if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there and there, behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out.”
Entering The Political Arena
The struggle for eight hours transformed the labor movement into an independent political force. The victory of May Day and the reaction to the Haymarket Affair set ablaze the spirits of working people everywhere, and by October of 1886, unions in most parts of the country had organized independent labor parties and nominated candidates for office. In the years preceding May Day 1886, the labor movement’s main strategy had been to stay out of the political arena, feeling that more could be won through strike action and boycotting.
The Haymarket Affair was the gateway for a brutal bosses’ offensive. Employers began forming associations to break up the labor movement and wrench the eight-hour day from the hands of their workers. The police broke strikes and the courts ruthlessly charged countless workers nationwide on account of “conspiracy.” The straw that broke the camel’s back was the arrest of three boycotters in New York who, after a trial with a jury composed entirely of employers, were sentenced to several years of hard labor. It became clear that the labor movement could not simply rely on direct action while leaving the political arena to the bosses. The working class itself needed to fight for political power.
One of the first parties to form was the Independent Labor Party of New York and Vicinity (ILP). On October 3, 1886 it had 7,750 members, but by October 16 membership had already doubled in size. Henry George, a pro-labor journalist and writer, was selected as the ILP candidate for the New York mayoral race. Both the Democratic and Republican candidates attempted to use vicious red-baiting to smash his campaign—the Democrats even formed a fake ILP which decried “social revolutionists” and “anarchists from Europe” in an attempt to trick workers.
But they could not stamp out the broad support for a genuine workers’ party. The NY mayoral race galvanized countless other labor candidates for Congress in Maine, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Tennessee, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Colorado; even more states ran municipal candidates. The Democratic and Republican parties were forced to either run pro-labor candidates themselves in order to garner enough votes, or to combine their forces and run a joint anti-labor candidate.
In the end, the results were astonishing. The success of these campaigns was in no small part due to the role of socialists, who were key in initiating and taking them forward. The Laborites of Chicago won 25,000 out of 92,000 votes, electing a state senator and seven members of lower house. The People’s Party of Milwaukee elected a mayor, state senator, six assemblymen, and one congressman. The Knights of Labor elected a state senator and three assemblymen. In Fort Worth Texas and Eaton Ohio, most of the labor candidates were elected. Henry George ultimately lost the NY mayoral race to the Republican candidate, but won 30% of the vote!
After these victories, the AFL set May 1, 1890, as the day U.S. workers should work no more than eight hours. May Day officially became an annual day of demonstrations during the 1889 founding congress of the Second International, a worldwide organization of socialist and communist parties. The Second International, inspired by the struggle waged by workers in the US, endorsed the AFL’s resolution and adopted the date of May 1 to commemorate the fight for the eight-hour day. The fight for eight hours spread far beyond the U.S., taking root and winning gains in over 25 countries including Mexico, Canada, Paraguay, Chile, China, Japan, Sweden, Australia, and many more!
Lessons For Today
In the almost 150 years since the first May Day, the divide between the rich and poor has grown even starker. The top 10% owns 70% of all wealth, and the ruling class uses divide-and-rule tactics to ensure it stays that way. Trump and the billionaire class are attacking all workers while using immigrants and trans people as scapegoats, because his administration has no real solution for the deep economic crisis facing working people.
The right wing is waging an ideological offensive against undocumented immigrants, portraying them as terrorists and criminals, and using this as an excuse to ramp up ICE raids and deport undocumented workers to Guantanamo Bay. These attacks have been extended to student anti-war protesters—international students with student visas are being kidnapped off the street and deported in an alarming assault on free speech, all in the name of nationalism and putting “America first.” Trump and big business are going for the jugular. More than ever, the labor movement needs to return to its militant roots and bring the lessons from May Day to today’s battle against Trump’s divisive administration.
Today, the labor movement has lost its way—the militant traditions of May Day have been beaten down from decades of blows by the bosses during the period of neoliberal globalization in the late 20th century. Neoliberal policies were centered around boosting corporate profits and removing barriers to the free flow of capital through deregulation, privatization, and an unrelenting onslaught of attacks on workers’ rights and living standards. Jobs were shipped overseas where labor was cheaper and existing unions were decimated.
The labor movement is in the early stages of recovering from those setbacks. Rather than rallying mass support for demands by building cross-union campaigns, fighting for workers’ political parties and power, and pressuring the bosses from below with strike action, a significant section of the existing union leadership is focusing on working with management to deliver moderate contracts for their members, and their members alone.
When the president of the Columbia University Graduate Student Union was expelled, UAW responded by telling members to call their senators. Putting all of labor’s eggs in the basket of capitalist institutions is a far cry from what’s needed right now: a united working-class movement that can shut down business as usual.
Much worse, some labor leaders have even parroted Trump’s own xenophobic language. Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, said “I think the biggest problem is people are trying to protect illegal aliens that come here and commit crimes and that’s unacceptable.” What’s unacceptable is labor feeding into the very attacks that pit other sections of the working class against each other. Leaning into Trump’s nationalist rhetoric is giving the bosses a leg up.
Other workers are not our enemy. Instead of shooting itself in the foot by falling for Trump’s anti-immigrant attacks, the labor movement should be actively building a fightback like that of the 2006 Day Without An Immigrant. On May 1, 2006, workers in 150 different cities left work to protest a vicious anti-immigrant bill put forward during the George W. Bush administration.
Millions flooded the streets, both immigrants and workers standing with them in solidarity, and the strength of the movement successfully stopped the bill from passing and pushed back on wider anti-immigrant sentiment in society. The antidote to the bosses’ division is solidarity—the struggles to defend immigrant rights, trans rights, and workers’ rights are one and the same, and the labor movement must stand up for immigrant and trans workers and be at the forefront of all struggles against oppression.
Importantly, the working class needs an alternative from the two parties of capitalism that can unite and fight for the struggles of all workers. From their inception and dating back to the first May Day, Democratic and Republican parties have served the interests of the corporate elite and this is no different today. Trump’s attacks today are a continuation of decades of attacks from both parties on working people, whether it was shipping away jobs overseas to boost profits during the 1980s or breaking efforts to strike during the Biden administration.
Both parties are responsible for the horrific genocide of Palestinians and the funding of the United States’ war machine, and both parties have attacked immigrants and deported millions of undocumented workers. The working class has no independent voice in politics, and without a party of our own, the interests of working people will always come last. A genuine workers’s party could both defend against Trump’s attacks and fight for full democratic rights and citizenship for immigrants, free gender-affirming care for trans people, an end to all imperialist war and redistribution of the bloated defense budget to fund affordable healthcare, housing, and college.
The task of the labor movement today is to put itself at the head of the fight against Trump, to champion all the oppressed, and to fight for broad demands that transcend individual workplaces. The demand for the eight-hour day spoke to workers of all gender, races, and nationalities and united the struggle of different unions into a movement so powerful that the bosses had no choice but to concede. Today’s struggles against Trump’s attacks must similarly be united into one struggle.
It is very positive that the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the Federal Workers Union (FUN) are organizing May Day rallies across the country, alongside other unions and union federations. They should use these rallies to build a movement that can go even further, because rallies alone won’t be enough.
This year’s May Day should serve as a springboard for a nationally coordinated one-day strike against Trump, Musk, and the billionaire class. UAW president Sean Fain’s call for a one-day general strike on May Day 2028 points in the right direction, but workers cannot afford to wait until 2028 to use our most powerful weapon: the strike. Unions everywhere should urgently build for a one-day strike this year by mobilizing all workers to join the fightback against Trump and the billionaires.
Building the strongest movement possible means linking up with workers internationally. The tariff war being waged by Trump is wreaking havoc on the global economy, but the capitalist class of each nation will ensure that they pass off as much of the economic burden as possible onto the working class in order to protect their profit margins. In the end, we have far more in common across borders with fellow workers than we ever will with the ruling capitalist classes of our own countries.
But just as the movement for eight hours demanded much further-reaching industrial change, this movement too must look beyond just Trump. Trump is a symptom of the disease of capitalism. Though working people have fought for and won many victories under capitalism, the private ownership of production and the profit motive driving the economy remain intact. This means that any reforms won under capitalism will eventually be clawed back, and the cycle of exploitation will continue. The only way to win truly lasting change and a just society is by fighting for a socialist future, where workers themselves democratically plan the economy around human need, not corporate profit!
Socialist Alternative Says:
- End all deportations and offer full citizenship rights for all! Return all those deported under Trump’s draconian rule.
- Release all student protesters and end campus repression! End the war in Gaza and all imperialist wars
- Fully fund our services! Defend against all attacks made to social security and medicaid.
- We need a federal jobs program! Good union jobs for all and the right to strike for federal workers!
- $25 federal minimum wage with cost of living adjustments to keep up with inflation.
- Stop the attacks on trans rights. Tax the rich to fund trans-inclusive Medicare for All.
- Break with both corporate parties. Build a new workers’ party.
- No tariffs and no corporate “free” trade! Bring the top 500 corporations into democratic public ownership and plan the economy according to human need, not profit.