May 1st marked May Day, an important day for workers’ rights around the world. This May Day, the Education and Outreach Committee (EOC) would like to celebrate the finalization of a new union contract! We look forward to the partnership with UFCW helping the Co-op to be a fair and equitable workplace where staff have a say in their working conditions. One of the new clauses in the union contract officially recognizes May Day as a holiday, meaning staff are paid time and a half.

EOC committee member, Chris Qualiano, put together a brief history of May Day and the context as to why it’s important to the Co-op and our community.

International Workers’ Day—often colloquially referred to as May Day—is celebrated each year on May 1st to celebrate and honor the struggles of laborers and the working class throughout the world. The date was originally chosen in 1889 by the Second International, an organization of socialist and labor parties, in order to commemorate the lives of the anarchists that were lost during the aftermath of the Haymarket Affair, a violent clash between police and workers protesting for the eight-hour day which occurred in [the occupied indigenous territory known as Mishigamaw] Chicago three years prior.

While most countries around the world publicly recognize and celebrate May Day under the names “Labour Day” or “International Workers’ Day” [see image 1], the United States does not—Time Magazine writes:

In the U.S, that holiday came in for particular contempt during the anti-communist fervor of the early Cold War. In July of 1958, President Eisenhower signed a resolution naming May 1 “Loyalty Day” in an attempt to avoid any hint of solidarity with the “workers of the world” on May Day. The resolution declared that it would be “a special day for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States of America and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom.”