The history of organized labor is long and brutal. The history of May Day, the holiday honoring the organized labor movement (it's also called International Workers' Day), was likewise born out of blood.
Older generations might connect May Day with the Soviet Union, with military parades and with communism, while younger generations may have not heard of the holiday at all. But, May Day was not created by the Soviet Union, for the Soviet Union or in the Soviet Union. May 1, International Workers' Day, was made in America.
The American labor movement in 2025 is a shadow of what it once was. It's certainly still capable of powerful things — take the 2023 Screen Actors Guild strike that shut down much of Hollywood for about six months.
But it pales in comparison to the heydays of the movement, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when workers across the United States frequently used massive strikes to bargain with their employers for better pay, safer workplaces and other unfair labor practices.
Establishing a 10-hour workday
One such movement throughout the time period was the fight for an eight-hour workday. According to the Economic History Association, many American workers labored for "seventy hours or more per week," from "first light to dark" during the 1700s and early 1800s. Assuming one day off, that's more than 11 hours each day.
Across the 1800s, however, employees began to organize and fight to reduce the working hours. According to a 1932 pamphlet published by the communist Alexander Trachtenberg, some of the earliest trade unions, formed in the 1820s and 1830s, went on strike specifically to demand a 10-hour workday. Following the economic downturn in the Panic of 1837, U.S. President Martin Van Buren signed an executive order establishing a 10-hour workday for federal workers.
The next goal was making that 10-hour day universal, which was accomplished bit by bit in the years leading up to the Civil War. The workers pushed on. "No sooner had this demand been secured in a number of industries than the workers began to raise the slogan for an 8-hour day," Trachtenberg wrote. He noted a case in Australia where workers successfully demanded "eight hours work, eight hours recreation and eight hours rest" in 1856.
While the Civil War temporarily slowed organized labor, the movement gained momentum in the following years. In 1866, a group of union leaders founded the National Labor Union in Baltimore, with an explicit goal of establishing an eight-hour workday. While the organization folded less than a decade later, its campaign lived on.
By the 1880s, conflicts between striking workers and the government had intensified. For instance, the federal government and state governments sent militias and the National Guard to break up a massive strike of railroad workers in 1877. At least 100 workers died in the violence, according to Britannica.
General strike on May 1, 1866
In 1884, a group of labor unions created a collective organization that would eventually evolve to become the American Federation of Labor (the AFL in today's AFL-CIO). At its fourth meeting, according to Trachtenberg, the group passed a resolution declaring "that eight hours shall constitute legal day's labor from May First, 1886." While the group did not declare how it intended to establish the eight-hour day, the subtext was obvious.
On May 1, 1886, tens of thousands of workers across the country walked off their jobs sites in a large general strike. The New York Times reported demonstrations in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston and elsewhere.
Chicago, in particular, was a hotbed of labor organizing, and the city was on edge. On May 3, in an effort to protect strikebreakers and intimidate striking workers, police shot and killed a striker at the McCormick Reaper Works.
A group of anarchists announced a demonstration in Haymarket Square, located around Des Plaines and Randolph Street, the following day. The mayor of Chicago, Carter Harrison, said he would attend.
On May 4, 1886, toward the end of the rally, as the crowd was beginning to disperse, an unidentified person threw a stick of dynamite into the police ranks, killing seven. The police opened fire on the crowd in response. Four attendees died, and several more were wounded in the aftermath.
Eight prominent anarchists were arrested and put on trial for murder. Despite evidence showing that some of the men arrested were not even present, all eight were convicted and sentenced to death. Four were hanged and a fifth died of suicide.
The events at Haymarket Square provided the push for an eight-hour workday with international attention. In the coming years, the American Federation of Labor continued to advocate for the practice in the United States, and chose to continue striking on May 1. The Second International, a gathering of labor organizers and socialist parties across the world, chose May 1 as a strike day out of solidarity with the Americans.
Labor Day made a national holiday
Today, however, America celebrates Labor Day instead of May Day. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the two holidays had similar intentions — a holiday for workers. However, one was accompanied by direct action and associated with dynamite being thrown at a crowd. The other was associated with street parades and festivals. In 1894 (in the wake of another strike that President Grover Cleveland broke using the Army), Congress passed a bill establishing Labor Day, not May Day, as a national holiday. Cleveland signed the bill.
It took a while for workers to finally win out. The eight-hour workday was effectively made law by the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which mandated a 40-hour work week with overtime pay, still the standard in the U.S. to this day.
Except for possibly the cobblestones of the nearby alley, Haymarket Square no longer truly exists — it's now a parking lot and modern-looking private residences. The city of Chicago erected a memorial on the site in 2004.