The History of Labor Day

Labor Day has been a national holiday in the United States since 1894. It may signify picnics, parades, a day off from work, or the end of summer and the beginning of fall for many Americans. The day actually celebrates a long history of U.S. workers, however, and their immense contributions at various periods under extremely difficult conditions.

The First Labor Day

Having the first Monday in September off from work was remarkable for American workers in 1894 when Labor Day was declared a national holiday. Working conditions in the country’s factories, railroads, mills, and mines were grim. Employees, including children, were often required to work 12 or more hours a day, six days a week, in crowded, poorly ventilated spaces.

Calls for shorter workdays and better conditions came from worker strikes and rallies in the decades after the Civil War. Union leaders in New York City organized what’s thought to be the first Labor Day parade on Sept. 5, 1882.

Tens of thousands of labor union members including bricklayers, jewelers, typographers, dress and cloak makers, and many other tradespeople took unpaid leave and marched with their locals. The day culminated in picnics, speeches, fireworks, and dancing.

Labor Day had been an official holiday in 24 states by the time it became a national and federal holiday. Labor Day parades and other festivities demonstrate the strength and esprit de corps of trade and labor organizations.

Labor Day vs. May Day

Both Labor Day and May Day grew out of violent clashes between labor and police in the American Midwest. May Day is another worker holiday.

What is known as the Haymarket Riot or Haymarket Incident began on May 1, 1886. Thousands of workers took to the streets of Chicago to demand an eight-hour workday. The demonstration lasted for days. A bomb was set off on May 4, killing seven police officers and eight civilians. The perpetrator was never identified.

The event inspired an international gathering of socialists in Paris to declare the 1st of May, May Day, a holiday honoring workers' rights. Now known as International Workers’ Day, the holiday is celebrated in many countries around the world.

Workers went on strike to protest eight years later in May 1894 to protest 16-hour workdays and low wages at the Pullman Palace Car Company. The company manufactured railroad cars in a plant near Chicago. Members of the powerful American Railway Union (ARU) joined in, refusing to move Pullman cars. Rail traffic across the country was crippled.

A languishing bill to make Labor Day a legal holiday was signed into law by President Grover Cleveland days after the ARU joined the Pullman strike. Cleveland also ordered federal troops to Chicago to end the boycott. Angry strikers began to riot and National Guard troops fired into the mob, killing dozens of people.

A History of Slow, Incremental Progress

The Labor Day holiday was thought to be a conciliatory gesture to labor and became the less radical alternative to International Workers’ Day. Company owners began to accept workers’ demands for better treatment as time passed.

Henry Ford more than doubled wages to $5 a day in 1914. He cut workers’ hours per day from nine to eight in 1926. Rivals realized he might be onto something when his profits doubled in two years.

The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act limited child labor, set a minimum wage, and mandated a shorter workweek with overtime pay for longer shifts during the New Deal. The average workweek had shrunk to five eight-hour days by the 1940s.

The Influence of Radicals

Deep political divisions shaped the American labor movement as it developed in the 20th century. Many early labor organizers and agitators were anarchists, communists, and socialists who saw the potential of collective worker action to create a more just society.

Eugene V. Debs helped found the American Railway Union and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and ran for president five times on the Socialist Party ticket. Prominent labor activists included anarchist Lucy Parsons, socialist Big Bill Haywood, and communist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

Social activists in more modern times included civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, worker rights advocate and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, and farmworker champion Dolores Huerta.

Government-Sanctioned Persecution

Leaders were often arrested on political grounds after major strikes and demonstrations. Scores of foreign-born radicals and labor organizers were rounded up by the police in Chicago and elsewhere after the Haymarket Incident. Eight men labeled as anarchists were convicted in a trial in which no evidence was presented that linked the defendants to the bombing. Seven of the men were sentenced to death and four of them were hanged.

They were among many people who were unjustly tried and executed to tamp down the growing labor movement and rid it of radical leaders.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics provided a large-scale demonstration of what living under socialism and communism was like beginning in the 1920s. Communists gained control of China and the People’s Republic was founded in 1949.

Anti-communist persecution was common in the U.S. after World War II with Western and communist nations locked in a Cold War. The 1947 Taft-Hartley Act required union officials to swear that they had no communist affiliations and it encouraged some unions to expel radicals. The U.S. Supreme Court found this provision of the act unconstitutional in 1965.

Labor Day in the 2020s

Labor Day weekend is now a time of barbecues, getaways, and summer clearance sales but worker-oriented Labor Day parades and festivities still abound in dozens of cities across the U.S. The faces in photos of those parades include all colors and ethnicities because unions today are more diverse than ever before.

Many Labor Day parades were canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 through 2022 but they resumed in many cities in 2022.

Labor leaders who focus on bread-and-butter issues rather than on broad social change continue to dominate the AFL-CIO and other unions. Unions also attempt to help their members by endorsing political candidates, supporting political action committees, and taking stands on civil rights and worker safety issues.

Union membership is on the rise after decades of decline, driven in part by the impact of the pandemic on workers, as well as a tight labor market in 2022. Employees at some Amazon, Starbucks, and Apple facilities and stores are among those who have successfully organized unions recently, seeking better pay and working conditions.

The Bottom Line

Labor Day marks the day in 1894 when Congress declared the first Monday in September a national holiday to honor the nation's workers and their contributions to the well-being of the country.

Labor Day's roots date back to the 1886 Haymarket Riot in Chicago. The parades and festivities celebrating workers have remained a significant part of the federal holiday.