Labor Day (Labor Day)
Description:
The modern version of Labor Day, celebrated in Canada as a holiday on a non-working Monday in early September, is such an organic part of the national culture that Canadians have long ceased to think about the historical meaning, true purpose and meaning of this holiday. Today, Labor Day is more associated with fairs and festivals, as well as the last summer holiday weekend, than with what it was originally intended to be: a joyful holiday for workers and their families to commemorate their heroically won rights.
While it’s unfortunate that Canada’s Labor Day has lost touch with its historical roots, perhaps that’s not surprising. What this means is that the “fighter’s holiday” is no longer relevant in Canada, and in a sense, he has become his own victim – the victim of the labor movement’s sustained success in improving the lives of Canadian workers. Paid leave, safe jobs, free health care, unemployment insurance, and many employment benefits are now taken quite naturally by Canadians. But many of these progressive achievements simply could not have been realized had it not been for those long-forgotten heroes who fought so hard for them at the dawn of the era of proletarian solidarity.
Now, even in Canada, few people know that the “feast-fighter” Labor Day began with the world’s first demonstration for workers’ rights, which took place in Toronto on April 15, 1872, just five years after the Confederation. On that historic day, the Toronto Labor Assembly, Canada’s very first centralized workers’ organization, held the country’s first significant demonstration.
Workers’ associations were still illegal in Canada at that time, and the authorities tried their best to suppress them, even though reactionary laws banning trade unions as “criminal collusion” had already been abolished in the mother country of Great Britain. One of the main reasons for the demonstration was to demand the release from prison of 24 leaders of the Toronto Printing Union, who advocated the establishment of a 9-hour working day. The event had a wide resonance that the authorities could not ignore. On Thanksgiving Day, then celebrated in the spring, tens of thousands of Torontons attended or witnessed rallies and marches of unionists demanding freedom for their imprisoned leaders and better working conditions for all workers.
The demonstration in Toronto on April 15, 1872, was a defining event in the history of Canadian labor unions, marking the beginning of the formation of a broader Canadian labor movement in the next decade and laying the foundations for what is now the annual holiday of workers around the world.
It is now a well-recognized fact that it was the success of the Canadian labor movement that initiated in 1984 the adoption by the American Federation of Trade Unions of a resolution on the transition to an 8-hour day from May 1, 1886. But the capitalists desperately resisted the introduction of the 8-hour day, and by April 1886, 250,000 workers were involved in the May Day movement centered in Chicago. The general strike and riot in Chicago, which resulted in casualties, eventually led to the adoption of the official sanction of the eight-hour working day. In memory of the bloody events of May 1886, the Congress of the Second International in Paris in 1889 declared May 1 as the Day of Solidarity of the Workers of the World.
Labor Day was originally celebrated in Canada in the spring, but it didn’t last long. After it was declared a public holiday by the Parliament of Canada on July 23, 1894, the celebration was moved to early autumn, where it remains to this day.
On May 1st in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, millions of people celebrate the social and economic achievements of the international labor movement. The rights acquired by the workers in the harsh struggle have to be defended and defended incessantly: the attempts of powerful transnational corporations to infringe on them are now all too frequent. Therefore, even in prosperous Canada, members of trade union groups and social activists are unable to stay away from the international labor movement.
Of course, at its core, the modern social movement in Canada is a movement of highly developed civil society activists, not those anarchic “left” forces that were at the origins of May Day in Canada in the 1870s: few modern Canadians would like to classify themselves as “left” or “right.” And accordingly, any one of them could be puzzled by a question like, "Are you white or red?" They do not have to choose only one of the alternatives: they are white and red. The flag of their country has both of these colors. Canadian patriots love their country very much and strive to make their life in this country even better. Therefore, it is increasingly possible to see peaceful May Day demonstrations taking place in the streets of Canadian cities under the slogans of struggle for the rights, dignity and honor of workers. (Based on wikipedia.org, alternatives.ca and nupge.ca)