The History of Labor Day

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Every year, workers across the United States celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday of September. It is seen as a marker of the end of Summer, the start of football season, and the return to school for millions of students. But what is the origin of this holiday? What is its relation to the internationally celebrated Labor Day on May 1st?

Depending on the source, it was first proposed in 1882 by either Peter McGuire or Matthew Maguire to the Central Labor Union of New York, as an official workers’ holiday. McGuire was General Secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor. Matthew Maguire was a machinist and a member of the International Association of Machinists. Both were members of the same branch of the Socialist Labor Party. Regardless of who is ultimately responsible, Labor Day originated in the labor movement and was conceived of by socialists.

The first Labor Day was celebrated on September 5th of 1882 in New York City. The Department of Labor claims on their website that the holiday was originally imagined as an innocuous celebration, with “speeches by prominent men and women…introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday.” However, the fact is that the first Labor Day saw 10,000 workers march from City Hall, past Union Square to 42nd Street as part of an “unpaid day-off” to give speeches and voice their discontent with the bosses. This was not simply the “festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families” that the Department of Labor website claims. Its origins lie clearly within the militant labor tradition of this country and of the international working class.
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[Elmore Furth]

2. On the first Labor Day in 1882 parade, 10,000 people protested 12-hour days, seven days a week.

My dad was a union steward and I believe in the union. But these Yuppies have made it unfashionable, like civility.

"Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America."
John L. Lewis


"What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright."
Samuel Gompers

People stood up on the first Labor Day, in 1882, to walk in a parade in New York City. About 10,000 marchers took an unpaid day to demonstrate against what was then the workplace norm: 12-hour days, seven days a week.

The idea of a “workingmen's holiday” spread, and by the end of the decade, eight states had passed laws recognizing it. In 1891, San Diego had its first Labor Day parade.

Three years later, Congress established a federal holiday.

By the mid-1950s, about 35 percent of America's workers belonged to unions. That number has dwindled since — it was 12.4 percent in 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — and with it went the protest part of Labor Day.


Labor Day reverence is lost, say historians

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