H eadlines
The Jewish History of May Day and Labor Activism
H I STORY
SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
MAY DAY MIGHT conjure
images of flower garlands
and maypoles as a traditional
European spring festival, but
the May 1 holiday is also a
celebration of workers’ rights.

Kate Rosenblatt, a fellow at
the Katz Center for Advanced
Judaic Studies at the University
of Pennsylvania and a professor
of religion and Jewish Studies
at Emory University, said the
workers’ holiday of May Day
was created during the 1880s
when American trade union-
ists took up the cause of the
eight-hour workday.

“They were responding to
the realities of a brutal labor
situation in which people — by
which I mean men, women and
also children because this is a
period before regulations on
child labor — were working
crazy hours, 12, 14, 16 hours a
day or more,” Rosenblatt said.

On May 1, 1886, unions in
Chicago called for a general
strike to demand an eight-
hour workday, and workers
across the country walked out
of their jobs. In Chicago, the
protest and accompanying
parade were largely peaceful,
but another strike on May 4
led to a violent crackdown
on protesters by police and
culminated in a bomb being
thrown into a crowd. The
incident became known as the
Haymarket Affair.

In 1889, labor organizers
decided to observe a worker’s
holiday on May 1 in honor
of the national strike and the
workers who were injured or
killed during the Haymarket
Affair. May Day gained a
second moniker, International
Workers’ Day, and became a
rallying point for labor activ-
ists for years to come.

Many Jews, especially
poor immigrants from Russia
and Eastern Europe, became
involved in unions and labor
organizing in the late 19th
and early 20th century. They
were overrepresented in the
garment industry and worked
in factories with dangerous,
exploitative working condi-
tions and starvation wages.

Rosenblatt said Jews partici-
pated in famous strikes in 1909,
when thousands of Jewish
Jewish women shirtwaist strikers hold copies of the socialist ‘The Call’ in 1910.

Photo courtesy of the Kheel Center, Cornell University Library is licensed under CC BY 2.0
women garment workers in
New York and Philadelphia
walked out of their jobs to
protest dangerous working
conditions and low pay, and in
1911, when workers responded
to the deadly fire that killed
146 young women — many of
them Jewish — at the Triangle
Shirtwaist Factory in New York
because they were locked in the
building with no fire escapes.

Jews across the country joined
unions like the International
Ladies’ Garment Workers Union
and the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers Union to advocate for
greater protections.

Rosenblatt added that in
the 1920s, members of the
ACWU, including many Jews,
SHARE your engagement, wedding birth,
Bar/Bat Mitzvah announcement
and any other simcha on both
jewishexponent.com and the weekly
Jewish Exponent
newspaper for ...

FREE .

J E W I S H E X P O N E N T . C O M / S U B M I T - M A Z E L - T O V
4 MAY 6, 2021
JEWISH EXPONENT
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM