International Workers’ Day is a celebration
of labour and the working classes that is promoted by the International Labour
Movement which occurs every year on May 1. The date was chosen by a
pan-national organization of political parties to commemorate the Haymarket
affair, which occurred in Chicago on May 4, 1886.
The 1904 Sixth Conference of the Second
International (International Socialist Congress), held from 14 to 18 August
1904 at Gebow, Amsterdam, called on “all Social Democratic Party organizations
and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on the First of
May for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the
proletariat, and for universal peace.”
May 1 must not be a holiday for workers! May 1 was chosen to be International Workers’ Day to commemorate the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. In that year beginning on May 1, there was a general strike for the 8-hour workday.
On May 4, the police acted against the
workers supported the strike, when an unidentified person threw a bomb. The
police responded by firing on the workers. The event lead to the death of eight
and injury of sixty police officers as well as an unknown number of civilians
killed or wounded.
On the evening of May 4, a meeting was
called, by means of an incendiary handbill, at a point in Desplaines Street, to
listen to speeches about the strikes and a fight that had taken place between
the police and a company of strikers.
Today: Average Usual Weekly Hours Worked on the Main Job in 2017
According to
the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), the data on
average usual weekly hours worked in the main job broken down by total
employment, full-time employment and part-time employment, show that the most
countries are within the maximum limit of 8-hour per day (5 days a week), at
least officially, as in true labor market environment many employers deploy
their human capital a lot more than what they mention to their reports.
0 comments:
Post a Comment