May 1 is a holiday in more than 80 countries. Hundreds of millions of people will get a day's respite from their grinding work routine on the first working day of next week. But many of them will be unaware of the sacrifices their laboring forefathers made to give us the International Workers' Day and make working life what it is today.

To know that we have to travel back in time, 125 years to be precise, to Haymarket in Chicago where it all started. The struggle of workers is as old as industry itself, but the Haymarket Massacre gave it a new meaning and infused in it a new life.

In 1884 the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States set May 1, 1886, as the date by which an 8-hour work day would become standard. Hundreds of thousands of (half a million, according to some estimates) workers marched across American cities on the designated day to demand that. On May 3, striking workers held a meeting outside their factory in Chicago. And when the bell signalling the end of the work day rang, some of them rushed forward to confront the strike-breakers emerging from the factory. But as the striking workers ran toward the factory gate, police fired without any warning or provocation, killing at least two of them.

The next evening, workers called a mass meeting at Haymarket, where a second police firing killed at least four workers (the toll was higher say many sources), though this time city officials claimed the firing was in response to a bomb thrown by "one of the workers" which killed a policeman. Several other policemen were killed in the violence, many by their colleagues' bullets fired in the dark. Eight workers were charged with the murder of the policeman killed in the bomb blast. Seven were sentenced to death and one to 15 years in prison. One of the seven committed suicide, four were executed, and the sentences of two were commuted to life imprisonment.

In 1889, the Second International, or international organization of socialist and workers' parties, declared at its inaugural congress in Paris that demonstrations across the world would be held on May 1, 1890, to commemorate the sacrifice of the workers in Haymarket. By 1891, May 1 had become an international event.

This in short is the history of International Workers' Day, though in the US, where it all began, Labor Day is observed on the first Monday of September.

Workplaces and working conditions today are much better than a century ago, but labor is still the most neglected factor of production. Workers are the first to be sacked or laid off when a company or business faces financial problems, most of which are created by top executives and managers because of their greed or lack of foresight or both. And while workers bear the brunt of dropping sales or profits, top executives continue to draw astronomical amounts as salary and bonus which could pay for the upkeep of hundreds of workers' families.

In 1919, one year after the end of World War I, the International Labor Organization (ILO) was formed to protect workers' rights across the world. But ILO discarded the high ideals of social justice and the right to decent work championed by the Second International and the International Association for Labour Legislation, and instead tried to "strike a balance" between "idealism and pragmatism".

It is this so-called pragmatism that has plagued workers for decades. It's on the pretext of pragmatism that enterprises deny them their rightful dues. The problem of workers in the unorganized sector is worse. They have no job or social security, no retirement benefits - in short, no future.

The condition of those working in the marginal sectors or what many socio-economists call the parallel economy is worse. The developing world has millions of them without whom the mainstream economy would find it difficult to move, and still they are the most neglected section of workers.

The increase in the use of machinery and division of labor over the years has not made life any better for workers anywhere in the world. Instead, as Karl Marx says in the Communist Manifesto, the worker "has lost all individual character", and become "an appendage of the machine".

The global financial crisis denied tens of thousands of workers across the world even the right to be "an appendage of the machine". Article 23 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which backs ILO in its fight for workers' rights, says: "Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection." Forget human dignity and the supplement, workers in many countries don't even get paid their due.

The number of working poor has been rising because their wages have not kept pace with rising prices. This is true of workers across the world and their desperate struggle continues. But surprisingly, the most dynamic political working class struggle is not raging in poor countries. Instead, it is seen mostly in Western countries where capitalists have launched an assault on wages, social legislation, employment and working conditions. This can be attributed to the lack of international solidarity among workers compared to the powers that be.

The most promising signs of working class struggle, however, can be seen in developing countries of Asia and Latin America. Perhaps the investment in productive economy by large emerging countries has something to do with that. Perhaps that would lead workers toward a better future. Perhaps workers will get social justice and the right to decent work that workers at Haymarket demanded 125 years ago.

The author is a senior editor with China Daily.

(China Daily 04/29/2011 page9)