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History

Some Labor history: Day was first identified as an International Labor Day by the Second International in 1889, in solidarity with the eight "Martyrs of Haymarket," the socialist and anarchist leaders who were collectively held responsible for the actions of an anonymous bomb-thrower at the Haymarket Square rally for the 8-hour work day on May 4th, 1886, in Chicago, more due to their political views than to any connection to the actual bomb-thrower, who remains unknown to this day (four were executed, one killed in his cell just before his execution under mysterious circumstances, and the other three were later pardoned by Illinois' Governor Altgeld in 1893). It was only in 1892 that an "official" Labor Day was established by Congress as the first Monday in September, some say in an attempt to prevent identification with International Labor Day in May (the further establishment of a "Loyalty Day" on May 1st would lend credence to this theory). Nonetheless, May 1st is also celebrated in the United States by socialists, trade unionists, and leftists of all kinds, both in the 1920s and today, without the official sanction of the U.S. government.

Ultimately, I think that the concept of a Labor Day should be enough to establish a single entry, with links to the specific date or way it is celebrated in every individual country, be it Canada, Germany, the United States or wherever else. The histories of the two are definitely linked.



Well, McCarthyism per se was long after the 1920's, and the degree to which anti-communism is "healthy" is certainly open to debate.


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I found one web page claiming that the unusual date for Labour Day in the US and Canada stems from an early-September event in Canada that led to the repeal of a ban on unions, and that the US picked it up from there:

http://www.perf.bc.ca/cep1092/labday.htm

No idea if it's true or not, but there you go. -- Paul Drye

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It's pretty silly to have articles on both Labour Day and Labor Day but get over it! I think that they should be merged. --Taw

They are different holidays that are celebrated on different days of the year. Besides "Labour Day" is not a holiday in the US (our holiday is "Labor Day"). --mav 18:15 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

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The only reason the U.S. government specifically chose May 1 for Loyalty Day is to attempt to forestall the celebration of Labor Day on that day. - Hephaestos 18:19 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

But that is a defining characteristic of this holiday. Therefore that bit of info has no place in theintroductory paragraph. --mav

This is very confusing. As far as I know, Labour Day is a holiday in Semptember only celebrated by Americans. May Day is not celebrated over there. They are two different holidays, right? --BL


Further to BL's post...

In the UK, Labor Day refers only to the American holiday (we don't celebrate 'Labour Day'... the holiday described in the article would be called 'May Day' here. I don't know about other European/Commonwealth countries. Thus it seems odd to point 'Labor Day' to 'Labour Day' and not the other way around.

Also, have a great Labor Day Holiday! Mysteronald 23:11, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Does en.wikipedia.org have an offical policy on using American vs. British spelling or is it on an article by article basis?

At the very least we should make this article coherent in its usage: adopt one standard spelling when speaking of the holiday in general and use the specific spelling of the holiday on a country by country basis when speaking only of that particular country.

I suspect that the most reasonable approach would be to adopt the spelling "Labor Day" for the general holiday (since the vast majority of people on the planet who celebrate this holiday are American) and use the British/Canadian spelling for the Canadian holiday. And before anyone starts howling...I happen to be Canadian myself. --Peeter 17:09, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think Labor day should direct to the US holiday, because that is the US spelling, not to this page. --SodiumBenzoate 02:35, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

________________________

To those of us interesting in preserving our Canadian contributions to the North American "Labour/labor" day holiday, I am somewhat dismayed at the depth of American details in comparison to the Canadian history. In reality the holiday stems from grass roots labour movements in both contries, each movement leveraging momentum and precedence from each other: Canadian labour demonstrations starting in 1872, U.S demonstrations starting several years later, U.S. legistation established, Canadian legislation then follows. Why not write the article with a more even North American tone?

Split

UNtil this article has significantly more to it than it does now, I can see any reason for a split. That said, I think that an expansion and split is quite possible, but only once the metarial is there to justify it. Caerwine 14:09, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it would really just make a bunch of stubs (or merely a redirect in the case of something like European Labour Day) so I'm going to remove the {{split}} tag for now. --Icelight 18:17, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
It just seems odd that the other U.S. holidays have their own page, but not Labor Day. -Acjelen 16:11, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Germany and Labour Day

The section on Germany is not exactly NPOV, but I'm not sure how to fix it. Andjam 08:11, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Labor Day in Germany and Austria today is barely associated with National Socialism but rather a celebration day of the traditional left wing parties, i.e. Social Democrats and Communists. I'll think of a formulation to add this information in a way to balance the POV.

Merge with May Day?

I think that while very related, they are often different (esp in Canada for example) so I would vote no merge j-beda 16:57, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

  • I would vote no merge, as the date of Labour Day/Labor Day varies from country to country, and so do the styles of commemoration. For example, Labour Day, Western Samoa is August 7. Alpheus 04:38, 2 August 2006 (UTC) (moved from Three entries, two entries, one entry ? j-beda 17:58, 2 August 2006 (UTC))

Editors regularly clean out undiscussed links from this article. Please discuss here if you want a link not to be cleaned out regularly. (You can help!) --VS talk 04:38, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

VS talk has removed an external link to a website which I publish containing information and on May Day in Australia. I believe this link is still relevant to the article. To avoid a conflict of interest, I should not post the link to the article myself unless it has been discussed on this page. Other editors are free to post the link if they think it is relevant.

Denmark and Labour Day

In the article it says that Denmark do not celebrate Labour Day...this is wrong. It is not a public holiday as such, but half a day off for all employed in the public sector and a whole holiday for many workers.....big Labour Day-demonstrations are held each year, the biggest in Fælledparken, Copenhagen with approx 70.000 participants. Copeh 08:47, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Be bold, Copeh! With some editing, your second sentence would fit right into the article. -Acjelen 13:38, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Labor vs. Labour

I know this is a British vs. American issue, but it would really be great if the spelling were consistent throughout the entire article. The guidelines don't really help to decide for either version in this case, but since the article's title is "Labour Day", I'd rather stick to the British spelling. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.108.109.173 (talk) 18:04, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I just did a "find on this page" search of this article for labor. The only instances of that spelling came in U.S.-specific uses of the word, such as mentioning the federal holiday in September or the American labor organization Knights of Labor. In both cases "labor" is part of a proper name and should use the standard spelling of that name. Often attempts to "correct" the spelling of certain words are made on the English Wikipedia, but these should be quickly reverted. -Acjelen 18:39, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
In Australia we have the even more confusing situation of the Australian Labor Party, but organised or independent labour. i.e. We use the British spelling for all cases but the proper name of one of our two major political parties. Orderinchaos 00:38, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
We get anons changing early Labour Party info all the time because they think it's Labor, then theres others who spell present-day Labor as Labour, then theres the legitimate use of labour in present-day as OIC pointed out. It's a bit like their/there/they're... some just don't get it :P Timeshift 00:53, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Merge with "International Workers Day"?

International Workers' Day seems to overlap this article pretty much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.203.242.203 (talk) 00:00, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think those need to be merged. Labour Day is about the actual holiday, which varies from location to location. International Workers' Day should be about only to the 1st of May celebration, no matter what geographical region (obviously it should mention if the Labour Day is another day). May Day mentions IWD, but also includes other celeberations that occur on that day. IMHO, we should link to IWD on the main page. Whether we call it May Day or IWD doesn't matter but we shouldn't be linking to May Day since the other celebrations are of far less importance compared to IWD. 15:09, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Essentially what occurred, and I gathered this from Talk:May Day, was that May Day was dominated by information on International Workers' Day which took up the entire page. What was done was to move IWD to its own page and have May Day page primarily be about traditions and rituals. Unfortunately, in the process of doing this, some editors seriously downplayed IWD. The section on IWD was moved all of the way to the bottom with a short redirect to IWD at top. The section was also an incoherent rambling about how it was basically an anarchist holiday. Apparently someone got upset and thought IWD was some kind of fringe holiday, whereas May Day in their mind was only about maypoles. I personally think IWD should have its own page, because it does have its own rich history and really did dominate the page. But I also think there should be a significant entry on the May Day page that shows its connection with IWD. I set about moving the section towards the top, rewriting it, and adding a little sentence in the intro. Oh, and I think that Labour Day should be merged with IWD. For the American holiday there's Labor Day -- which should remain seperate IMO. Uwmad (talk) 17:14, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Call for consensus

This seems to be resurrected and yet never resolved each year at May 1. The two pages are (as of now) mostly duplicates. There's a separate article for the United States' Labor Day, so this needs to redirect to International Workers' Day, or vice-versa, or this needs to become Labour Day (New Zealand), or it needs to change to something else entirely. But there cannot remain two articles which cover the same topic and list international workers day celebrations in two different places: see the guidelines WP:MergeDup and WP:MergeOver on why this is a problem.

  • Merge into Labour Day, as Cs32en. I just found these pages and it really makes no sense to me to find a different article for a different spelling of the word! Harald88 (talk) 09:05, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
  • I would just be stupid to merge these two section.(labour day/international workers day) Everyone knows what labour day is...and barely anyone knows what international workers day is. If anything "international workers day" should be merged into "labour day"
  • You're not stupid. No one is. :) Happy Labor Day --19:15, 7 September 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.121.36.115 (talk)
  • Do not merge. Mayday and Labour Day are two different days, at different times of the year, with different histories and traditions. If there is duplication in the articles, then that duplication should be removed. The two different days should not be confused.Spylab (talk) 12:57, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose Merge - In New Zealand, you can observe International workers day, then later in the year have a holiday on Labour Day. They are not the same thing, and merging would necessitate creating a separate article for the New Zealand Labour day (ditto for any other countries where Labour day is not 1 May). dramatic (talk) 11:30, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose Merge - As a former union Member from Canada, the title "Labour Day" has special meaning and it would not be correct to merge this special day with the International Workers Day article, this is of course besides the fact the two events occur on separate dates months apart, we also have separate "May Day" celebrations in Canada, it's a very different type of celibration. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yeggster (talk • contribs) 13:44, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
  • Split off Canada section' - As a Canadian, after reading through Labor Day, it seems Canada would fit better with the American one, as the activities done are essentially the same. Other sections, I'm not too sure, as they're rather short and I can't conclude. NagamasaAzai (talk) 03:12, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Chinese Holiday?

A friend in China told me this was a national holiday for three solid days, and so I Wikipedia'd it to see what was up. Lo and behold, it's true, but... this idea that the Chinese government shoved together three traditional holidays strikes me as odd, particularly given that one of them is the Mid-Autumn Festival. May 1st seems a strange time to have a mid-autumn festival in the northern hemisphere... or am I missing something? Iamvered (talk) 15:55, 1 May 2008 (UTC) The person who wrote the above is confuse and, I think between Labor Day and Memorial Day. Memorial Day is in the Spring and Labor Day is in the Fall. It is really hard to tell the difference between Labor Day and Memorial Day, sometimes!

Starting from last year, the Labour Day national holiday was reduced from 3 days to 1 day. Together with the subsequent weekend, a 3-day holiday is formed. Mid-Autumn Festival is a new holiday since last year.129.94.30.7 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:32, 11 May 2009 (UTC).

United Kingdom and Labour Day

May 1 is not a national holiday in United Kingdom. There are several places where you can find info about it. With a quick look in google: "nor is it a bank holiday in the United Kingdom" in [1]. Anyway, the best test is that last May 1 (4 days ago) I had to go to work ;) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Samer.hc (talk • contribs) 02:32, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Jamaica copyvio?

The section about Labour Day in Jamaica appears to have been largely lifted intact from "History of Labour Day". National Labour Day 2008. Jamaica Information Service.. This page carries a valid copyright notice so the text is not in the public domain. This issue needs to be addressed and the section rewritten or removed. - Dravecky (talk) 17:08, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Hungary

The Hungarian labourr day is held on 1st May, like in China or in Germany. It should be noticed in the article.

Bye


India section

A large portion of the section on India sounds more like an op-ed piece on "The History of International Worker's Day" - there's no citations, it's very 'opinion' oriented, and it's less about India than 'the history of the day' - if it belongs anywhere it belongs at the beginning of the article. Could someone with more Wikipedia editing experience address this issue? (or politely tell me I'm wrong?)

This is the section I'm talking about:

May 1, often called May Day, just might have more holidays than any other day of the year. It's a celebration of Spring. It's a day of political protests. It's a neopagan festival, a saint's feast day, and a day for organized labor. In many countries, it is a national holiday. May 1, International Workers' Day, commemorates the historic struggle of working people throughout the world, and is recognized in every country except the United States, Canada, and South Africa. This despite the fact that the holiday began in the 1880s in the United States, with the fight for an eight-hour work day.

Hollow Shel (talk) 05:06, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

United States Section

What's this about not wearing white after Labor Day? If this is or ever was a 'tradition' it was obviously not very widespread. A citation has been requested since October 2009, and I move to get the statement removed. This is a gross misrepresentation of American culture. Sanzoneja (talk) 21:22, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

That would be nothing to do with the observance of Labor Day, as such. It would be a seasonal change. In the US the "summer season" is considered to run from Memorial Day to Labor Day ( not the strictly climatic season ) . When the summer season ends, you stop wearing the summer clothes, which, depending on the fashion/era/class styling, might preclude females from wearing white.Eregli bob (talk) 12:12, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
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