IUOE Local 150 has been fighting for fair wages and safe working conditions since the very beginning.
Chicago’s labor movement has a storied past — one that shaped the rights of working people across the nation. From the Haymarket Riot of 1886 to today, the fight for dignity, safety, and fair pay continues to define who we are and what we stand for.
The fight for shorter hours of work often appeared at the ballot box as American workers realized their collective political strength. Local ordinances and state laws appeared everywhere in an attempt to regulate legislatively the hours of work. This political battle inevitably found its way to the courts, where decades-long legal fight eventually helped shape the scope and reach of American government.
Peter J. McGuire was the General Secretary of the Carpenters Union. In 1881, he also was the first Vice-President of the American Federation of Labor (AFL)—the first amalgamation of trade unions to last to this day. From his platform as editor of the Union’s newspaper, The Carpenter, McGuire advanced a simple concept: if on May 1, 1881, all workers put down their tools after eight hours of work, they could demonstrate to their employers—and more important, to themselves—their collective power to control production. By controlling the hours of work, they could end the race to the bottom and provide more work for those less skilled or less able. By spreading the hours amongst more workers, working people could increase their collective strength and reverse the race to the bottom. And by controlling output, working people exercising their collective strength through trade unions and if necessary strikes could control wages.
McGuire and his AFL comrades repeated the eight-hour demonstration again on September 1, 1881, and many times thereafter. The now infamous Haymarket Square Riot in Chicago in May 1886 when eight police officers and several other bystanders were killed by a bomb began as a peaceful demonstration in support of the Eight-Hour Day. On May 1 and September 1, this demonstration of collective strength fueled American labor organizing and became the cornerstone of the American Labor Movement.
McGuire’s brainchild of an eight-hour general strike on May 1 is recognized today as the origins of May Day, the international Socialist holiday celebrated throughout the world. In 1894, acknowledging the political strength of Organized Labor, the U.S. Congress recognized September 1 as “Labor Day”—a federal holiday.