At the First time international world workers’ day came up in Australia on April 21, 1956 in combating area of workers to decrease working hours to 8 hours per day that work stoppage in 1986 was one of its American example.
In this regard, labor movement had more actions and increased significantly in Europe which the movement in the year 1889 in international workers congress with the attendance of more than 400 representatives was the most important of its appearance and following it, a representative of American workers drew all attention to go on a strike on the first day of May and this leaded to the selection of international workers’ day by the congress.
But the combating history of workers were not allocated to these years rather it came back to past years, meaning to the time that the nature of social system was changed from feudalism to capitalism. There were always combats to oppose hard working conditions and high working hours that these combats took a new form to itself after industrial revolution and we can call strike (work stoppage) among these types. The worker’s class started to organize themselves for obtaining their rights from employers and in fact we can call worker’s class as a real child of industrial revolution.
Labor movement made employers to fall back and accept legitimate workers requests by public demonstration and strikes. These requests included insurance, leave (monthly and annually) and retirement’s rights. Gradually as people knew their more rights, the cases such as maternity and entitled leave, in-service training, and educational scholarship were added to their requests and today we can see some cultural and recreational centers for workers and their families.
These combats have been continued up to the present time will be continued up to the time that the employers observe natural and primary rights of workers which the 99% movement and occupation of Wall Street are from this type.
The demonstrators believe that the capital of society has been centralized at the hand of 1% of people and this leaded to the abuse of minority from the majority.
By: Kaveh Taheri
