Labor Day date? 8 working hours… the first spark of Labor Day!

Labor Day date 8 working hours the first spark of Labor Day

Work

It is to perform a profession, job, or task, in exchange for a sum of money during a pre-agreed period of time, usually in the last week of every month.

Work is of great importance in human life, as it provides him with the ability to provide all the basic needs of himself and his family, and contributes to protecting the living situation of every individual working in a job. Active and interactive in his home and community.

Labor Day date

So Why do we celebrate Labor Day?

It is also called (Labor Day), an annual occasion to celebrate workers, and an official holiday in many countries of the world.

• Different times..

Although some countries celebrate Labor Day in September, the majority of countries in the world circulated May 1 as the official Labor Day celebration. Labor Day in the United States is an official holiday celebrated on the first Monday of September, and it is considered an unofficial end of the month. the summer.

Labor Day in Canada is celebrated on the first Monday in September. It is noteworthy that more than 80 countries celebrated International Labor Day on May 1, while several countries chose their own dates to celebrate Labor Day.

The manifestations of the celebration differ from one country to another, where in America marches are held for workers in the streets, and speeches are given on this day in public squares, and the manifestations of the celebration vary between different sports and artistic activities, sit-ins and protest demonstrations that sometimes take the nature of violence…

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Labor Day stages

Until Labor Day became an official day to celebrate workers, it relied on a number of stages, namely:

• European stage

In past centuries, Labor Day did not exist, but because a group of labor activists organized special unions to protect workers, many demands for workers’ rights began to appear; In 1870, the Nine-Hour Movement appeared in Canada, which calls for reducing the number of long working hours and limiting them to only nine hours. for workers in Canada.

• The American stage

The idea of ​​Labor Day was transferred to America, through the leader of the American workers, Peter McGuire, but it did not like the American government, which rejected it; Because of its reliance on reducing the number of working hours, as is the case in Canada, the American Labor Union declared the date of May 1 in 1886, a day for a strike, with a demand to reduce the number of working hours to only eight hours, and participated in labor demonstrations more out of three hundred thousand workers, and the main demand of the workers was that no worker should work more than eight hours a day.

These strikes spread in many American states and lasted for several days, and the police killed a group of workers, and then a labor conference was held to describe the bad manner in which the police dealt with workers, and at the end of the conference, members of the police attacked the workers present, and these attacks continued until All the workers of the United States of America responded to these criminal acts, which amounted to the execution and killing of many workers, to announce the first day of the month of May, the day on which the labor protests began as Labor Day, and it was officially recognized by the rest of the world, With a commitment to reduce the number of working hours and limit them to eight hours only.

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Haymarket Square… This is where it started

Australia was the first country in the world to innovate the celebration of Labor Day, and that was in the mid-19th century before it moved about thirty years later to the United States, when Chicago workers demanded that the daily working hours be reduced to eight hours.

The idea of ​​Labor Day appeared in America, through American labor leader Peter McGuire, Peter McGuire, but she did not like American capitalism, which rejected it; Because of its reliance on reducing the number of working hours, the American Labor Union declared May 1, 1886, a day of the strike.

Where the first spark for the story of the International Labor Day started from the American city of Chicago, specifically in the Haymarket Square, which witnessed the largest number of labor strikes in one day in the history of America after it reached about five thousand strikes, in which about 400 thousand members of the general workers participated.

This was in protest against the brutality of capitalism and the exploitation of workers by business owners, and to demand their due rights under the slogan: “Eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep, eight hours of free time for rest and enjoyment.” They worked from 14 to 16 hours every day and received very low wages.

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Accordingly, a labor meeting was held on the fourth of May with the authorities, and in the presence of the mayor of Chicago, who left after a few minutes. 11 people were killed, including 7 policemen.

As a result, the death sentence was issued for seven labor leaders, two of them were commuted to life imprisonment, while a third committed suicide in prison, and the sentence was executed against four workers on November 11, 1887, although the prosecution admitted that the bomb was not thrown by any of them.

Before it was revealed eleven years later, that the matter was orchestrated by the police after the police chief admitted that they were the ones who had thrown that bomb and that it was he who fabricated the accusation against the executed workers so that the memory of Haymarket is considered the most prominent stations of the workers’ struggle to demand their rights And the one with the largest share in choosing the beginning of May is a memory to celebrate Labor Day.

Labor Day date 8 working hours the first spark of Labor Day