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,
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established a bank to provide
credit and loans to workers and
built thousands of cooperative
housing units in New York City
to provide them with decent
living conditions. By World
War II, union members began
looking at labor rights as a
holistic vision of quality of life
for the working class, including
natural light, green space,
plumbing and sanitation.

Although May Day as a
workers’ holiday originated
in the United States, the
celebration and the workers’
movement it represented were
also widely popular in the
Soviet Union, which conse-
quently led to popularity
among Soviet Jews and Israelis
during the 20th century.

Armin Rosen, a staff writer
for Tablet, wrote in his 2017
article “When May Day Was
a Major Event in Israel” that
while the USSR eventually
became one of Israel’s enemies,
there was initially no tension
between left-wing politics and
Jewish nationalism. Many
members of Israel’s commu-
nist kibbutzim were raised
The holiday was also
popular among mainstream
Israeli labor unions that were
not aligned with communism,
but it began to fall out of favor
as tensions rose between Israel
particularly in response to the
dangers workers have faced
during the pandemic.

Michael Hersch, director of
the Philadelphia Jewish Labor
Committee, cited the fights
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.”
KATE ROSENBLATT
to admire the USSR and the
tenets of communism.

“The ties went deeper than
any political alliance: For many,
Zionism was an avowedly
secular pro-labor movement
with the same utopian aims as
Communism itself,” Rosen wrote.

and the USSR and Israeli
politics shifted to the right.

In the present day, popular
Jewish observance of May Day
has waned, but Jewish labor
leaders view the holiday as an
opportunity to focus on the
labor fights of the modern era,
response to essential workers
like grocery store employees
and nurses during the last
year. “Calling someone a hero
is great, but how about paying
them? The hope is that you’ll
see workers rewarded with a
different level of compensa-
tion and appreciation, not just
being called a hero.”
The national JLC did not
host a May Day celebra-
tion this year, opting instead
to commemorate Workers
Memorial Day, which is
observed on April 28 to honor
the victims of workplace injury
and illness, in light of the
pandemic. The organization
held a virtual event on April
29 to mark the occasion as
well as the 50th anniversary
of the Occupational Safety and
Health Act. l
for paid sick leave, raising the
minimum wage and a return
to collective bargaining as
contemporary versions of the
eight-hour workday campaign.

“You’ve heard workers
lauded as heroes in this spanzer@jewishexponent.com;
country,” Hersch said of the 215-832-0729
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