Bring back May Day! By Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange
Time for the return of the 8-hour day and 5-day workweek
By the end of the decade, May Day was a holiday celebrated by workers and workers' movements in every industrialized country in the world.
It still is -- now, in fact, it's observed globally. Except, ironically, in the land of the holiday's birth. The holiday's burgeoning popularity led Congress, in 1894, to establish 'Labor Day' in September to honor American workers -- a holiday established, not by ordinary workers themselves as an expression of empowerment, but by big business and their Congressional apologists, as a way to try to dictate what workers were and weren't allowed to celebrate. One day belonged to the workers; the other 364 days belonged to big business, and we were to work as many hours of those days as business pleased.