Workers and Employers and May Day » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Workers and Employers and May Day » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

The eight-hour workday was only one of the workers’ struggles at the time. In February 1886 the molders of the McCormick tractor factory were out on strike for higher pay,[3] and on May 3rd, just two days after the general rally and strike for the eight-hour day, two McCormick strikers who were challenging strike-breakers were killed by the police.[4] A protest against this police brutality took place in Chicago’s Haymarket on May 4; when the police attacked this rally as well, a bomb went off among the policemen, one of whom was killed.[5]
To this day who planted the bomb remains unknown. But seven labor leaders — Albert Parsons, August Spies, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden, Louis Lingg, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer — were sentenced to death, not because they were involved in the bombing but because they supposedly “aided abetted and encouraged” the unknown bomber. Four of the seven were hung; the sentences of two were commuted to life in prison; and one committed suicide. Workers the world over were enraged by the defeat of the struggle for the eight-hour day and the hangings of the Chicago labor leaders and ever since they commemorate the struggle on May 1st. In honor of the spilled blood of the workers they carry red flags.