Why is May 1st Labor Day?

Many today associate May 1st with the historic Concertone of Rome, organized for decades in Piazza San Giovanni and from this year at the Circo Massimo by the CGIL, UIL and CISL unions. But the universal Workers’ Day has ancient origins and what is celebrated on this day is a very important anniversary that marked a watershed for the rights of those who have a job.

1886 and the Haymarket Massacre

The year was 1886 when on the first of May in America a general strike was called throughout the United States to reduce the working day to 8 hours. The protest lasted 3 days and in Chicago it culminated, on May 4, in the Haymarket massacre, a real battle in which 11 people, including officers and demonstrators, died, but in the end the 8-hour working time was law. A very important conquest that marked a day of true celebration for those who had been exploited up to that point.

The institution of the International Festival and fascism

At the Paris Congress of 1889, May Day was officially declared the International Workers’ Day, in memory of the Haymarket workers’ massacre. And it was adopted by many countries around the world, including ours. During fascism, however, the holiday was suppressed in favor of the “Italian Labor Day” on 21 April.

Labor Day becomes national

In 1945, three days after the shooting death of Mussolini on the run, May Day will be the scene of renewed mass participation of workers of all conditions and ages. With the “Provisions regarding festive occasions” of 1946, Labor Day was recognized as a national holiday, and thus institutionalized and definitively relocated to the date of May 1st. As soon as the Second World War ended, May Day ceased to be a day of demonstration of workers’ demands tolerated or openly opposed – depending on the alternating historical events – by the State, and became a national holiday in which the Republic is recognized which, precisely between 1946 and 1947, the Founding Fathers wanted it to be “founded on work”.

The Portella della Ginestra massacre

But the first post-war Labor Day, in 1947, turned into a bloodbath, the Portella della Ginestra massacre, in the province of Palermo. The bandit Salvatore Giuliano and his gang opened fire on a procession of around two thousand workers, mainly farmers, who were protesting against working conditions in the Sicilian countryside. Under the fire of Giuliano and his killers, sent to repress the procession by the large landowners allied to the mafia, the bodies of eleven farmers remained, plus dozens of wounded.