Like 10 other dates on the calendar, May 1st is a public holiday in France, but also in many other countries. If many people know that Labor Day is celebrated every May 1st, do you know exactly why, and do you know the origin of this holiday? Contrary to other French holidays, May 1st has its origins in the United States.
It was on May 1st 1884 that American workers' unions decided to mobilize in order to demand the eight-hour day. Why May 1st? Across the Atlantic, this date corresponded to the first day of the accounting year for companies. Two years later, on May 1, 1886, when these wage demands had still not been met, large demonstrations were organized. On this occasion, more than 300,000 workers demonstrated peacefully across the country. On May 3, in Chicago, several strikers died during a demonstration. The next day, again in Chicago, a bomb exploded and clashes resulted in several victims among the police.
Although the media were not as developed at the time as they are today, these demonstrations were not without consequences in France. Thus, in 1889 in Paris, the Congress of the Second Socialist International decided, under the impetus of Jules Guesde, to make May Day a day of demonstrations. The first one was celebrated on May 1, 1890.
As in the United States, the demands were the same. But the situation turned dramatic on May 1st 1891. Nine people were killed and about thirty injured in the town of Fourmies, in the North of France.
The significance of May Day then became even more important in France. And it was in April 1919, following the vote by the Parliament of the eight-hour day, that May Day officially became a day off.
In 1941, while France was under the Vichy regime, Marshal Pétain declared that May 1st would be the"Day of Work and Social Concord" (in reference to the Vichy regime's motto"Work, Family, Country"). With the Liberation, this day disappeared until April 26, 1946 when the government finally decided to reintroduce it. In 1948, May 1st was definitively instituted as a paid holiday for employees.
