On a morning in May 1886, a factory worker in Chicago named Samuel Fielden straightened his worn jacket before stepping out into the street. His hands were calloused, his back permanently stooped from hunching over machinery since dawn until dusk. He did not return home to rest — he returned merely to sleep, only to go back before sunrise. Sixteen hours a day, six days a week: that was his life, and the life of millions of other workers across America. On that particular morning, he did not go to the factory. He went to Haymarket Square to demand something that — to us today — seems entirely reasonable: an eight-hour working day.
That demand sounded perfectly sensible. Yet in its time, it was nothing short of a revolution. And for that revolution, many would pay with their lives.
More than a century later, on the 1st of May 2024, thousands of workers took to the streets in Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, and other major Indonesian cities. Dressed in red, carrying banners and loudspeakers, their demands had changed with the times: the abolition of outsourcing practices, increases in the minimum wage, and adequate social protection. The era had changed. The faces had changed. Yet the essence of the struggle remained precisely the same: the dignity of those who labour.
CALLOUSED HANDS THAT BUILT THE WORLD
Remembering, Reflecting upon, and Reaffirming the Meaning of International Labour Day
I. The Background to International Labour Day
International Labour Day, or May Day, observed on the 1st of May each year, is far more than a public holiday in countries across the globe. It is a historical monument built upon the sacrifices, tears, and blood of millions of workers who refused to be treated as mere machines. Its roots are deeply embedded in the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century, when great engines began to transform the face of human civilisation—and simultaneously created a chasm of exploitation unlike any that had existed before (Foner, 1986).
The industrial revolution, which began in Britain towards the end of the eighteenth century and subsequently spread throughout Europe and North America, brought with it a dual consequence. On the one hand, productivity increased dramatically. On the other, working conditions deteriorated systematically. Workers—including women and children—handlaboured in dangerous conditions, without legal protection, without any humane limit on working hours. The wages they received were barely sufficient for survival, whilst the owners of capital enjoyed an accumulation of wealth previously unimagined (Thompson, 1963).
In the United States during the 1880s, the average working hours of an industrial labourer reached ten to sixteen hours per day. These conditions drove the birth of an organised labour movement rallying behind a slogan that would become iconic: "Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will." The Federation of Organised Trades and Labour Unions—which later became the American Federation of Labour (AFL)—set the 1st of May 1886 as the date upon which all trade unions were to strike in demand of the eight-hour working day (Green, 2006).
II. The Haymarket Tragedy: A Spark That Lit the World
The 1st of May 1886 became a day of mass industrial action across the United States. Approximately 350,000 workers from more than 11,000 companies downed their tools. In Chicago—then the largest industrial centre in the country—the movement was at its most massive and most historically significant (Adelman, 1986).
Two days later, on the 3rd of May 1886, police opened fire on a crowd of workers demonstrating near the McCormick Harvesting Machine factory, killing two and wounding many others. The following day, the 4th of May, a protest meeting was convened at Haymarket Square. As police moved to disperse the crowd, a bomb was thrown by an individual whose identity historians continue to debate. The explosion killed seven police officers and four civilians, injuring dozens more (Avrich, 1984).
The Haymarket tragedy triggered a wave of repression. Eight anarchist activists were arrested and tried in proceedings that legal scholars subsequently judged to be fundamentally flawed and riddled with political prejudice. Four of them—Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel — were hanged in November 1887. Another, Louis Lingg, died in custody under circumstances that remain disputed. Three others were imprisoned and subsequently released by Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld in 1893, who publicly declared that their trials had been unjust (Avrich, 1984).
Although the labour movement in America was briefly set back by the post-Haymarket repression, the events paradoxically ignited international consciousness. At the International Socialist Congress in Paris in 1889—attended by delegates from numerous countries—it was resolved that the 1st of May would be observed as International Labour Day, in commemoration of the Haymarket martyrs and in furtherance of the global struggle for workers' rights (Hobsbawm, 1984).
III. The Long History of Labour: From Servitude to Solidarity
A. The Roots of Exploitation: The Pre-Industrial Era
The history of labour is, in truth, the history of humanity itself. Long before the industrial revolution, the exploitation of human labour was already practised in various forms: slavery in the ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome, the feudal system in medieval Europe that bound the peasantry to the land of the nobility, and the transatlantic slave trade that carried millions of Africans to the Americas (Davis, 1966).
Within each of these systems, a single fundamental commonality existed: there was a group that laboured and a group that enjoyed the fruits of that labour. The relationship between the two was almost invariably marked by extreme inequality of power. Resistance was ever-present—slave revolts such as that led by Spartacus (73–71 BC), the Peasants' Revolt in England (1381), and various millenarian movements across Europe—yet all were suppressed with considerable bloodshed (Hilton, 1973).
B. The Industrial Revolution and the Birth of the Modern Proletariat
The industrial revolution that began in Britain around the 1760s created an entirely new social class: the industrial proletariat. These were former peasants dispossessed of their land by the enclosure movement, or craftsmen whose livelihoods had been destroyed by machinery, who were compelled to sell the only thing they possessed: their labour (Marx & Engels, 1848/2004).
The conditions of the early industrial workforce were truly deplorable. British government reports from the early nineteenth century documented children as young as six or seven years of age working in coal mines, crawling through narrow passages too small for adults to enter. Women worked in conditions no less hazardous, for wages lower than those of men. Occupational diseases—lung ailments from coal or cotton dust, accidents from unsafe machinery—claimed lives in great numbers (Engels, 1845/2009).
C. The Rise of the Organised Labour Movement
From systematic suffering arose systematic resistance. The Chartist movement in Britain (1838–1857) became one of the earliest mass labour movements, demanding democratic rights as the foundation for improved economic conditions. Trade unions, initially prohibited—in Britain through the Combination Acts of 1799–1800—gradually gained legal recognition throughout the course of the nineteenth century (Cole, 1948).
The First International (International Workingmen's Association), founded in 1864—with Karl Marx as one of its central figures—represented the first attempt to organise the labour movement across national boundaries. Though it ultimately dissolved in 1876 owing to internal divisions between the Marxist and Anarchist factions led by Mikhail Bakunin, the organisation laid the groundwork for international labour solidarity (Stekloff, 1928).
It was the Second International (1889–1916), which continued this mission, that established the 1st of May as International Labour Day, transforming the commemoration of Haymarket into a moment of consolidation for the global labour struggle (Joll, 1955).
IV. Labour Day in Indonesia: From Colonialism to Reform
In Indonesia, the history of the labour movement cannot be separated from the context of colonialism and the struggle for independence. The Cultivation System (cultuurstelsel) imposed by the Dutch from 1830 to 1870 was one of the most massive forms of labour exploitation in the history of South-East Asia: millions of peasant farmers were compelled to surrender one-fifth of their land, or sixty days of labour per year, to cultivate export commodities for the benefit of the colonial power (Geertz, 1963).
The modern labour movement in Indonesia began to take shape in the early twentieth century. Sarekat Islam, founded in 1912, drew a strong following from workers and small traders of indigenous descent. The Indonesian Communist Party (PKI)—which at its height became the third largest communist party in the world, after those of the Soviet Union and China—maintained very close ties with the labour movement through the All-Indonesian Central Labour Organisation (SOBSI) (McVey, 1965).
During the New Order era under Suharto (1966–1998), the labour movement was tightly controlled by the state. The only trade union permitted to operate was the All-Indonesian Labour Federation (FBSI), later renamed the All-Indonesian Workers' Union (SPSI)—both organisations were in effect state-controlled. Industrial action was severely restricted, and many labour activists were arrested or killed, including in the case of Marsinah—a female factory worker murdered after leading a strike in Sidoarjo in 1993 (Ford, 2009).
The Reformasi of 1998 opened a new chapter for Indonesia's labour movement. Ratification of ILO Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association enabled the formation of hundreds of new trade unions. Labour Day—which during the New Order had been forbidden from public commemoration—could once again be openly observed. In 2013, the Indonesian government formally designated the 1st of May as an official national public holiday (Tjandraningsih & Nugroho, 2008).
V. Achievements and Challenges: What Has and Has Not Changed
A. The Achievements of the Labour Movement
More than a century of labour struggle has produced tangible changes that we now take entirely for granted: the eight-hour working day, the weekend, the minimum wage, protections against child labour, occupational health and safety standards, maternity leave, social security, and the right to organise. None of these was gifts bestowed by the powerful—all were the fruits of a long struggle conducted at great cost in blood and tears (ILO, 2019).
The establishment of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in 1919—as part of the Treaty of Versailles following the First World War—represented international acknowledgement that world peace could not be achieved without social justice for workers. ILO Conventions have since formed the legal bedrock of labour legislation throughout the world (Rodgers et al., 2009).
B. Contemporary Challenges
Yet those victories have never been permanent. The wave of neoliberalism that gained momentum from the 1980s onwards—under the influence of Thatcherism in Britain and Reaganomics in the United States—brought with it a systematic assault on workers' rights: the flexibilisation of labour markets, the privatisation of public services, the weakening of trade unions, and the globalisation of production that relocated factories to countries with lower wages and weaker labour protections (Harvey, 2005).
In Indonesia, the controversy surrounding the Job Creation Law (Omnibus Law) enacted in 2020 reflects this enduring tension. Workers argued that the legislation facilitated dismissals, weakened redundancy payment regulations, expanded the scope of outsourcing, and reduced protections for female workers. The government contended that such flexibility was necessary to attract investment and create employment. This debate reflects the dilemma faced by developing nations within a highly competitive global economy (Caraway & Ford, 2020).
Further challenges arrive in the form of technological disruption. Automation and artificial intelligence threaten millions of conventional jobs, whilst the gig economy—characterised by digital platforms such as ride-hailing services, courier networks, and digital freelancing—creates new models of work that frequently obscure employment relationships and allow employers to evade their responsibilities towards workers (Prassl, 2018).
VI. The Important Messages of International Labour Day
International Labour Day is not merely a commemoration of the past. It is a space for reflection and a reminder of values that must continue to be championed.
First, workers' rights are human rights. When we speak of fair wages, humane working hours, safe working environments, and the freedom to organise, we are in truth speaking of human dignity itself. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) explicitly states that everyone is entitled to just and favourable conditions of work, including fair remuneration, reasonable limitation of working hours, and protection against unemployment (United Nations, 1948).
Second, solidarity is strength. A worker standing alone is easily overcome by concentrated capital. Workers who are organised, who stand in solidarity beyond the boundaries of individual companies, industries, and even nations, possess genuine negotiating power. The weakening of trade unions across much of the world over recent decades is strongly correlated with rising income inequality—a fact well-documented by economists (Piketty, 2013).
Third, change is possible. The workers at Haymarket were considered foolish, dangerous, and wholly unreasonable for demanding an eight-hour working day. Today, the eight-hour day is a universal standard. Those who now demand fair pay for gig workers, protection against automation, or equal pay for women—they may appear radical in some quarters. Yet history teaches us that the demands that seem impossible today may become tomorrow's common sense.
Fourth, collective memory is essential to the struggle. Without knowledge of the history of those who came before them, workers will always find themselves starting from nothing, always vulnerable to manipulation, and always unaware of how precious the rights they currently hold truly are. Labour Day is a moment to refresh this collective memory—not as a ritual of nostalgia, but as a source of energy for the struggle that remains (Zinn, 2003).
Fifth, and most fundamentally, labour has value, and those who labour must be valued. In an increasingly complex global economic structure, it becomes ever easier to forget that every product we purchase, every building we enter, every road we travel was built by human hands at work. The observance of Labour Day invites us not merely to look at the price of a commodity, but to consider who made it and under what conditions.
VII. Conclusion: From Haymarket to the Future
August Spies, one of the activists hanged in the aftermath of the Haymarket tragedy, is reported to have said moments before his execution: "There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today." More than 130 years on, those words continue to resonate.
International Labour Day is proof that such silence does indeed resonate. It is a reminder that the rights we enjoy today did not descend from the heavens, but were wrested through courage, perseverance, and the sacrifice of generations that came before us. And it is a challenge to us not to remain silent when those rights are threatened—whether by unjust legislation, by irresponsible technology, or by a culture that demeans the dignity of workers.
Each year on the 1st of May, those calloused hands should remind us: the progress of civilisation is not measured solely by the height of skyscrapers or the speed of internet connections, but by how humanely we treat those who build, maintain, and drive all of it.
Bibliography
Adelman, W. J. (1986). Haymarket revisited: A tour guide to labour history sites and ethnic neighbourhoods connected with the 1886 Chicago upheaval. Illinois Labor History Society.
Avrich, P. (1984). The Haymarket tragedy. Princeton University Press.
Caraway, T. L., & Ford, M. (2020). Labour and politics in Indonesia. Cambridge University Press.
Cole, G. D. H. (1948). A short history of the British working-class movement 1789–1947. George Allen & Unwin.
Davis, D. B. (1966). The problem of slavery in Western culture. Cornell University Press.
Engels, F. (2009). The condition of the working class in England (D. McLellan, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1845)
Foner, P. S. (1986). May Day: A short history of the international workers' holiday 1886–1986. International Publishers.
Ford, M. (2009). Workers and intellectuals: NGOs, trade unions and the Indonesian labour movement. NUS Press.
Geertz, C. (1963). Agricultural involution: The process of ecological change in Indonesia. University of California Press.
Green, J. (2006). Death in the Haymarket: A story of Chicago, the first labour movement and the bombing that divided gilded age America. Pantheon Books.
Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press.
Hilton, R. (1973). Bond men made free: Medieval peasant movements and the English rising of 1381. Routledge.
Hobsbawm, E. J. (1984). Worlds of labour: Further studies in the history of labour. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
International Labour Organization. (2019). A quantum leap for gender equality: For a better future of work for all. ILO.
Joll, J. (1955). The Second International 1889–1914. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (2004). The communist manifesto (L. M. Findlay, Trans.). Broadview Press. (Original work published 1848)
McVey, R. T. (1965). The rise of Indonesian communism. Cornell University Press.
Piketty, T. (2013). Capital in the twenty-first century (A. Goldhammer, Trans.). Harvard University Press.
Prassl, J. (2018). Humans as a service: The promise and perils of work in the gig economy. Oxford University Press.
Rodgers, G., Lee, E., Swepston, L., & Van Daele, J. (2009). The International Labour Organization and the quest for social justice, 1919–2009. ILO.
Stekloff, G. M. (1928). History of the First International. Martin Lawrence.
Thompson, E. P. (1963). The making of the English working class. Vintage Books.
Tjandraningsih, I., & Nugroho, H. (2008). The flexibility regime and organised labour in Indonesia. Labour and Management in Development, 9, 1–14.
United Nations. (1948). Universal declaration of human rights. United Nations.
Zinn, H. (2003). A people's history of the United States: 1492–present. HarperCollins.
