Strike For Eight-Hour Day in the USA

Robert Owen, a utopian socialist, was the first to propose an eight-hour working day in August 1817. In 1866, the Geneva Congress of the First International put forth the slogan “Eight hours for work, eight for rest, eight for what we will” and demanded all the civilized countries to enact laws to recognize it.

At that time, many countries in the United States and Europe gradually developed from the phase of liberal capitalism to the phase of imperialism and in order to stimulate the rapid development of the economy and extract more surplus-value, capitalists continued to take measures to increase labor-time and labor intensity to exploit workers cruelly. In the United States, workers worked 14 to 16 hours a day, sometimes as long as 18 hours, but their wages were gravely low.

In October 1884, eight international and national workers’ groups in the United States and Canada held rallies in Chicago, USA. They decided to hold a general strike on May 1, 1886, to force capitalists to accept an eight-hour working day. On that day, more than 216,000 workers in Chicago went on strike for an eight-hour working day. The strike also swept through the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Louisville, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Baltimore, after bitter and bloody struggles, it was finally won. On July 14, 1889, the International Socialist Workers’ Congress of Paris solemnly convened in Paris, France. At the Congress, French representative proposed that May 1, 1886, the struggle day of American workers for the eight-hour working day to be designated as International Labor Day. This decision immediately saw a positive response from the workers from all over the world. On May 1, 1890, the working class in Europe and the United States took to the streets in succession, holding grand demonstrations and rallies to fight for their legitimate rights and interests. Since then, May 1, has become a festival of struggle for the world’s workers.

The Chinese workers’ and people’s first celebration of Labor Day dates back to 1918. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the State Council of the Central People’s Government designated May 1 as a legal and statutory Labor Day in December 1949.