The fight for better working conditions never ceases.
May Day is International Workers’ Day. It commemorates the Haymarket massacre: unions in the U.S. had set May 1, 1886, as their goal for achieving the eight-hour workday. A general strike was called in many cities, and on Saturday, May 1 hundreds of thousands of workers nationwide rallied for change.
Employers and governments mobilized strike-breakers and police, and tension escalated. On May 4 striking workers, their allies, and police clashed in Haymarket Square in Chicago. A bomb and ensuing gunfire killed at least eleven and wounded many more.
May Day commemorates those—and so many others—who have been killed or maimed by violent repression of collective action. It is also much bigger than that: we celebrate the gains made by labour around the world alongside the sacrifices made to achieve them.
That struggle for the eight-hour day was eventually successful. Still, too many workers are outside the protections that labour has won. Injustice and exploitation continue around the world.
Bringing it Home
While the day is international, each local fight and accomplishment is part of the larger struggle. We have accomplishments to recognize here in Canada and in UCTE:
Recently, our NAV CANADA bargaining unit and our members at Victoria Airport have ratified new collective agreements with numerous improvements to wages, benefits, job security and other provisions.
In the present, our locals carry on the day-to-day work to enforce our collective agreement rights. Our national leaders advocate for our members’ rights on Workforce Adjustment committees and in union-management consultations.
We also look to the near future, where the Treasury Board units that have reached impasse—PA and EB—will take their demands to the mediation process. The SV bargaining team is dealing with employer responses to some of their proposals. The TC group bargaining team is pushing the employer to engage meaningfully with their proposals. Our Parks Canada bargaining team is currently pushing for equity with the core public service, among other demands.
Every day, UCTE members are devoting volunteer time and energy to improving conditions for all. May Day is a time to recognize that, and to renew our own commitment to activism in its many forms.
Organizing and collective action around the world is the path to better workplaces and better societies, as much as it was for those activists in Chicago in 1886. Solidarity!
