When I first think about Labor Day, I think about how relieving it is to have a three-day weekend. I think of Labor Day sales, the start of school semesters; this year, I think of Beyoncé’s birthday. But unlike holidays such as Memorial Day, Thanksgiving and even the increasingly condemned Columbus Day, I can’t recall being taught in school why or how we should celebrate Labor Day.

The name of this comparatively overlooked holiday is the first clue: It’s Labor Day, not Workers’ Day. International Workers’ Day is a real holiday, recognized on May 1, to celebrate working people and the movements to improve their rights — a holiday that the United States does not federally recognize.

The primary reason we do not celebrate Workers’ Day, much less learn its history in school, is because it actually originates in the violent past of the American labor movement, in an event known as the Haymarket Affair. 

In the late 19th century during the Second Industrial Revolution, the American labor movement was characterized by workers and their unions organizing and striking for better pay, safer working conditions and fewer hours as companies profited greatly from new technologies. 

On May 3, 1886, one such strike in Chicago demanding an eight-hour workday culminated in violent clashes between striking workers and the police, causing deaths on both sides. A bomb explosion in the police ranks resulted in the trial and execution of four labor leaders, even though there are still questions today about who was truly responsible. 

Ironically, international awareness of the event led to recognition of May 1 as Workers’ Day across the world — but the U.S. government was uneager to endorse such an explicit recognition of the working class, let alone an annual celebration of the workers’ strike in Chicago. In a decidedly less radical recognition of the labor movement, Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894 and is instead celebrated on the first Monday of September.

The lack of a true Workers’ Day in the U.S. reflects the country’s commodification of workers. They are treated as an economic good subject to the needs of the market, not real people for whom the economy should work. More than one hundred years later, the same causes for labor organizing are still present. 

The cost of living in Los Angeles alone has skyrocketed; since the pandemic, rent has increased by nearly 22%, while the minimum wage has only increased by $1.78. It is hardly a surprise that 2023 has been characterized as a “hot labor summer” as workers across multiple industries in L.A. have gone on strike for better pay and treatment.

On the other side of the picket fence, employers complain of a post-pandemic labor shortage, with high quitting rates in industries like food service and hospitality persisting today. Yet employers have also exploited mass resignations by refusing to rehire, instead consolidating work that may have been previously done by larger workforces onto fewer employees — furthering overworking and burnout for workers, another cause for workers’ renewed demands.

It is no coincidence that the need for workers to organize and strike just to simply scrape a living arises over and over again in U.S. history. While our long history of worker unity and protest is important to celebrate, strikes are not simply disruptive to producers and consumers, but to the lives of striking workers themselves. 

The enormous economic inequality that still exists today — a century after the horrific violence of the original labor movement — makes evident that we cannot leave workers’ rights and economic well-being in the hands of employers.

Despite the bloody and clouded origins of Labor Day, and despite the economic struggle we encounter today, the best way we can celebrate workers in this country is in the tradition of the original labor movement: by demanding more of our policymakers. 

Nothing short of government action — laws and regulations that institutionalize our demands for living pay, fewer hours and safe workplaces — will create the just and equitable workplace working Americans deserve. As of now, the workers’ movement is far from over.