Happy International Workers' Day! - Poster of the Week
- politicalgraphics
- May 1
- 1 min read
May 1
William Gropper
Offset, 1938
New York, NY
82748
May Day
Eric Drooker; JustSeeds
Offset, 1993
Chicago, IL
20516
Work Connects Us All
Favianna Rodriguez; AFL-CIO
Digital Reproduction of Offset Original, Circa 2010
Oakland, CA
49924
Today is International Workers’ Day, or May Day, a national holiday in most countries–but not in the United States where it was founded. Its origins date back to the 1886 Chicago Haymarket strike, when 300,000-500,000 workers nationwide went on strike to demand an eight-hour workday. Unions gradually secured 8-hour days for their respective professions over the coming decades, and the 8-hour day became fully realized in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.
Today, workers are demanding:
A federal minimum wage of $20 an hour to cope with costs of living that have far outpaced income growth
Greater union protection
Mandatory paid leave and parental leave
Comprehensive benefit packages
Cancellation of the $2 trillion of student debt 41 million Americans hold
Health care for all
An end to Trump’s oligarchic alliances, deportations, and cuts to federal agencies
Over 1,000 protests have been planned in all 50 states under the slogan “50501.”
Find your local protest here.
May 1st Demonstration Resources:
References: