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5-1-08 Ben Matthews FORUM
05/01/2008 09:03:12
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This is Ben Matthews with the WJBC Forum.
If you’re listening to this Forum live on the air, it’s likely a little before 9, or a little after noon or 5. WJBC airs the Forum at those times because it allows a large portion of the population to listen on the way to or from work, or over their lunch hour. And that’s all thanks to the eight-hour workday.
That eight-hour workday that many of us have become accustomed to didn’t become a reality easily. And it wasn’t some mega corporation or massive company that thought it would do something nice for its employees and allow them to work from 9-5.
The struggle for the eight-hour workday was difficult, drawn-out and yes, even deadly.
May 1, 1886 was declared the start of the eight-hour work day. Rallies were held throughout the United States. Hundreds of thousands of workers, including about 40,000 in Chicago, went out on strike. 80,000 people marched down Michigan Avenue. A couple days later, striking workers in Chicago met near the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. plant. Violence ensued and the Chicago police attacked the strikers, killing four and wounding many others.
In the following days a peaceful demonstration was held at Haymarket Square. As the rally was coming to an end, an unidentified individual threw a bomb at the police line, which was marching toward the rally. The police opened fire and a few minutes later several police officers and civilians were dead, and many others injured. The Haymarket rally had become the Haymarket riot, the meeting turned to massacre. And the eight-hour workday would have to wait. For many it had to wait nearly 50 years. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 made eight hours a legal day’s work throughout the nation.
While May Day in the United States is more often associated with leaving flowering baskets on porches, and even with Loyalty Day or Law Day, it is recognized as Labor Day or International Workers Day throughout most of the world. And perhaps it should be here as well.
Members of the middle class and working class still struggle, though today’s struggles are sometimes different that the struggles of centuries past. Even here in this community there are groups of workers, like those at the Pantagraph, fighting for fairness in the workplace.
Frederick Douglass reminds us
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
In honor of the many who’ve come before us, and the martyrs who are remember on May Day, may we be cognizant of the struggle and committed to progress.
Going Forward, this is Ben Matthews with the WJBC Forum.
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