Like 10 other dates on the calendar, May 1st is a public holiday in France, but also in many other countries. While many people know that Labor Day is celebrated on May 1st, do you know exactly why, and the origins of this holiday? Unlike other French public holidays, May 1st has its origins across the Atlantic, and more specifically in the United States.
It was on May 1st 1884 that American workers' unions decided to mobilize to demand the eight-hour day. Why May 1st? Across the Atlantic, this date corresponded to the first day of the business accounting year. Two years later, on May 1 1886, when these wage demands had still not been met, large-scale demonstrations were organized. Over 300,000 workers demonstrated peacefully across the country. On May 3, in Chicago, several strikers die during a demonstration. The following day, again in Chicago, a bomb exploded and clashes resulted in several police casualties.
Although the media were not as developed as they are today, these demonstrations were not without consequences in France. In 1889 in Paris, the Congress of the Second Socialist International decided, at the instigation of Jules Guesde, to make May 1st a day of demonstrations. The first was celebrated on May 1, 1890.
As in the United States, the demands were the same. But the situation turned dramatic on May 1, 1891. Nine people were killed and around thirty injured in the commune of Fourmies, in the Nord region of France.
The significance of May 1st became even greater in France. And it was in April 1919, following Parliament's vote for the eight-hour day, that May 1st officially became a non-working day.
In 1941, while France was under the Vichy regime, Marshal Pétain declared May 1st to be the"Fête du Travail et de la Concorde sociale" (in reference to the Vichy regime's motto"Travail, Famille, Patrie"). 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 public holiday.
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