Home ›› 01 May 2023 ›› Opinion
May Day stands out supreme in the annals of the human history. The day is observed with the slogan of eight-hour workday reverberating all across the globe. Those who are enjoying the eight-hour workday today should remember that it is the outcome of the May Day. Workers, employees and officials enjoy a one-day holiday without realizing that it is the result of a long-drawn bloody struggle.
During the nineteenth century, people, especially, working class people, women and children were dying in scores for working long hours in unhealthy conditions of their working places. Working people were regarded as beasts of burdens. They had to work for their masters for 16-20 hours a day. Owners of the factories and industries treated them like that of slaves in a slave society. Workers were deprived of their human rights.
Deprivation, long working hours and inhuman behaviors of owners prompted them to launch a resistance movement demanding eight-hour workday. This movement was in fact the culmination of many more such movements around the globe as capitalist society had by the time became a global social order. Although people only know about the Haymarket protest in Chicago in America it goes as far back as 1668 when the first labor organisation was established in New York. Gradually the movement of workers began to grow in other parts of the country. In 1866, sixty trade unions came together to establish the National Labor Union.
The movement demanding eight-hour workday intensified in America in 1884. That year American Federation of Labor expressed its solidarity with the movement aiming to reduce the working time to eight hours. All industrial belts in America went on a strike on May 1, 1886 demanding eight-hour workday. The epicenter of the movement was Chicago. Three lakh workers, especially masons, forced the government to bow down to their eight-hour workday demand. The following day on May 2, the weekly holiday, the strikers tried to spread their movement.
All hell broke loose on May 3 when the demonstration took a serious turn sending the factory and mill owners into panic. As Chicago police swooped on the workers of the MacCormick Reaper Works, six workers died on the spot at police firing. On May 4, protesting the brutal murders of six co-workers over one lakh workers called a rally at the Haymarket Square. Again four workers were killed in police firing and over a hundred workers injured while hundreds of others were arrested. In a fake trial labor leader August Spies, Parsons, Engel and Fischer were hanged to death.
During the trial what the workers’ leader August Spies said, is still a source of inspiration for all those fighting for the rights of workers. He, defiantly and holding his head high, said: “And if you think that you can crush out these ideas that are gaining ground more and more every day; if you think you can crush them out by sending us to the gallows; if you would once more have people suffer the penalty of death because they have dared to tell the truth—and I defy you to show us where we have told a lie—I say, if death is the penalty for proclaiming the truth, then I will proudly and defiantly pay the costly price! Call your hangman! Truth crucified in Socrates, in Christ, in Giordano Bruno, in Huss, in Galileo, still lives—they and others whose number is legion have preceded us on this path. We are ready to follow!”
At the congress of the Second International in 1889 Friedrich Engels in memory of the workers movement of May called for a labor strike on May 1. Since then May 1 has been observed by the workers from all around the globe as the day of expressing unity and solidarity among the workers. The day is also known as the International Workers’ Day.
What August Spies and others sacrificed their lives for during the month of May are yet to come true. In some countries workers enjoy their eight-hour workday but in most other countries they don’t. In our country workers are yet to enjoy eight-hour workday let alone their other basic rights. Even they don’t have any workplace safety and security. They die in fire incident, they die in building collapse and they die in stampede.
One such tragic incident was the collapse of Rana Plaza, a factory building, in Savar on the outskirts of Dhaka. The building came crumbling down on April 24, 2013 killing 1, 134 people and injuring at least 2, 000 others. It seemed the heartbreaking incident would open the eyes of those who were assigned to look after security, fire and building safety issues of workers. But even 10 years after the man-made humanitarian catastrophe, export-oriented ready-made garment factories are yet to fully comply with the international safety standard. Still labor rights abuses are rife and still thousands of workers are working in unsafe condition.
Soon after the Rana Plaza collapse remediation process began in full force but it gradually started to lose steam in absence of the legally binding contract called the Accord on RMG Fire and Building Safety. Now there has been no such bar since January 2021. Not that there is no progress at all. There are progresses but they are not enough to protect unwanted incidents like Rana Plaza collapse. In a paper released recently, the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) found that the progress of implementing safety measures in the factories under the Department of Inspection of Factories and Establishments (DIFE) was only 54 per cent on average.
The 54 per cent progress does not necessarily mean the most serious safety issues have been addressed. In fact, the data shows that the progress of remediation remained the least in issues related to fire, said the paper titled ‘Emerging Concerns of Occupational Safety and Health of the RMG Industry: Role of Public and Private Monitoring Agencies’.
Amid all this gloomy and dismal picture still there is something that gives us a positive signal. Bangladesh now hosts half the top 100 LEED certified green factories across the globe. Of them, 49 are in the apparel sector. BGMEA sources a few days back talking to reporters said 500 more garment factories were in the pipeline to get LEED certification from the United States Green Building Council. But we shouldn’t be elated at this minimum level of progress. We have a long way to go not only in terms of workplace safety and security we have also to ensure the wellbeing of factory workers who run the wheel of civilization.
The key spirit of the May Day was to ensure eight-hour workday that is still a far cry. The workers in our country still work for 10-14 hours. It is almost the same as it was before the epochal May Day. Along with eight-hour work a day, there were other basic rights that the workers of Haymarket raised vociferously. Apart from eight-hour workday and those basic rights, the workers in our country are not even entitled to bare minimum wage to be able to forage for their meals three times a day. Since the Ranza Plaza disaster the minimum wage in the apparel sector had been reviewed every five years. It was reviewed last in 2018 when the minimum wage was fixed at Tk 8,000. It was only half of what the workers demanded. Even after huge inflation and rises in the prices of essentials it is still in place.
Those who were charged in the homicide case following the Rana Plaza disaster are the owner of the building, the owners of five factories, local government representatives, administration officials and political activists. Of the 37 accused, who are facing trial only the building owner Sohel Rana is now behind bars, 30 secured bails while six others are at large. Sohel Rana’s father died. No one has yet been convicted.
The spirit of the May Day is to ensure the basic rights of workers along with their demand for an eight-hour workday. Let alone the basic rights, we are yet to deliver the justice for the victims killed in the Rana Plaza disaster. Until and unless punishment for those responsible for the homicide can be ensured and basic rights of workers established the May Day will come and go with no significance to the lives of millions of workers.
The writer is journalist. He can be contacted at maksud.i.rahaman@gmail.com
