Did you know that the minimum workday used to be 13 hours, which can reach an exhausting 17 hours a day?
Yeah, work day wasn't always a holiday to stay home and relax watching Netflix.
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It was on May 1, 1886 that thousands of workers gathered by the American Federation of Labor paralyzed the city of Chicago (USA) with a major strike. In addition to the absurd load of working hours, the workers also went through inhumane conditions.
One of the goals of the strike was to reduce the hours worked to eight a day.
On May 3rd, protests continued through the streets of Chicago and protesters and police clashed. On March 4, the Haymarket Uprising broke out in the city after a bomb exploded in the square that gave its name to the conflict, leaving a number of wounded, dead and arrested.
In memory of the demonstrations in Chicago that socialist parties and unions from all over Europe gathered in congress in Paris, already in the year 1889, called the Second Socialist International, who decided to choose the date of the beginning of the demonstrations as the world date for celebrate the
The holiday is celebrated in eighty countries around the world, such as Brazil, Portugal, Russia, Spain, France, Japan.
Both ways of referring to the May 1st holiday are correct.
Although the eight-hour working day is common and already guaranteed in labor contracts, the right was only officially validated years after the conflict in Chicago, by the French senate on April 23, 1919.
In 1917, a great general strike of workers took place in Brazil, who, as in other parts of the world, were also in search of better working conditions.
Due to the climate of demonstrations, the president at the time, Arthur Bernardes, in 1925, recognized the significance of the struggle and established the national holiday of May 1st here in Brazil.
However, the date gained more popularity in the Getúlio Vargas government in the 30s. The then president took advantage of the date every year to publicize important government proposals for workers.
One of his famous disclosures took place in 1943 and was about the Consolidation of Labor Laws (CLT) for Brazilians. In 1998, the CLT served as a reference for the composition of the Federal Constitution.
