HAPPY MAY DAY!!!

Today is 1 May, May Day, which is the international day for working people to celebrate our victories over the last 160 years or so. In many countries around the world today is a holiday and is marked by mass parades and festvities by unions and leftwing organisations. Here is Queensland, in the noble Aussie spirit of the long weekend we celebrate the day on the first Monday in May, this Monday to be precise.

It's intructive to reflect on the gains made by workers in the last two centuries. According to an email I received today from my own union, the NTEU,

150 years ago the working week for skilled workers was 58 hours – 10 hours per day Monday to Friday and 8 hours on Saturday. The achievement of the eight-hour day was not the result of employers deciding to simply give their workers more time off!! It had to be fought for through industrial action, often in the face of physical violence.

The achievement of the 44-hour week (half day on Saturday) came as recently as 1920. It was only in 1941 that annual leave of one week became standard (four weeks in 1973). In 1950 the female wage rate was lifted to 75% of the male wage. The ACTU’s second equal pay case in 1972 finally established the principle of equal pay for equal work. More recently (1979) the right to return to work after 12 months unpaid maternity leave was won. (for more info see http://actu.asn.au/AboutACTU/Abouttradeunions/default.aspx)

All these achievements have been won through organized labour, either through industrial action, the courts or the parliament.

In many countries, universal franchise, the right to vote was won through union organising and industrial action. And today a good measure of the democratic health of a society is the freedom of working people to organise in unions and engage in industral and political campaigns for a better deal. Where unions are weak or non-existent, then you can be sure that life is not good, pretty rotten in fact, for people on the lower levels society.

So Happy May Day!!!

And below, in the spirit of the day, is the text of the Internationale, the global hymn of workers solidarity

Arise, wretched of the earth

Arise, convicts of hunger

Reason thunders in its volcano

This is the eruption of the end

Of the past let us wipe the slate clean

Masses, slaves, arise, arise

The world is about to change its foundation

We are nothing, let us be all

|: This is the final struggle

Let us group together, and tomorrow

The Internationale

Will be the human race :|

There are no supreme saviours

Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune.

Producers, let us save ourselves

Decree the common welfare

That the thief might bare his throat,

That the spirit be pulled from its prison

Let us fan the forge ourselves

Strike the iron while it is hot

|: This is the final struggle

Let us group together, and tomorrow

The Internationale

Will be the human race :|

The state represses and the law cheats

The tax bleeds the unfortunate

No duty is imposed on the rich

'Rights of the poor' is a hollow phrase

Enough languishing in custody

Equality wants other laws:

No rights without obligations, it says,

And as well, no obligations without rights

|: This is the final struggle

Let us group together, and tomorrow

The Internationale

Will be the human race :|

Hideous in their self-glorification

Kings of the mine and rail

Have they ever done anything other

Than steal work?

Into the coffers of that lot,

What work creates has melted

In demanding that they give it back

The people wants only its due.

|: This is the final struggle

Let us group together, and tomorrow

The Internationale

Will be the human race :|

The kings make us drunk with their fumes,

Peace among ourselves, war to the tyrants!

Let the armies go on strike,

Guns in the air, and break ranks

If these cannibals insist

On making heroes of us,

Soon they will know our bullets

Are for our own generals

|: This is the final struggle

Let us group together, and tomorrow

The Internationale

Will be the human race :|

Labourers, peasants, we are

The great party of workers

The earth belongs only to men (sic)

The idle will go reside elsewhere

How much of our flesh they feed on,

But if the ravens and vultures

Disappear one of these days

The sun will always shine

|: This is the final struggle

Let us group together, and tomorrow

The Internationale

Will be the human race :|

You can listen to it in a variety of languages here.

And also in memory of all those who died struggling for justice below are the lyrics of the Joe Hill Song

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,

alive as you and me.

Says I "But Joe, you're ten years dead"

"I never died" said he,

"I never died" said he.

"The Copper Bosses killed you Joe,

they shot you Joe" says I.

"Takes more than guns to kill a man"

Says Joe "I didn't die"

Says Joe "I didn't die"

"In Salt Lake City, Joe," says I,

Him standing by my bed,

"They framed you on a murder charge,"

Says Joe, "But I ain't dead,"

Says Joe, "But I ain't dead."

And standing there as big as life

and smiling with his eyes.

Says Joe "What they can never kill

went on to organize,

went on to organize"

From San Diego up to Maine,

in every mine and mill,

Where working men defend their rights,

it's there you find Joe Hill,

it's there you find Joe Hill!

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,

alive as you and me.

Says I "But Joe, you're ten years dead"

"I never died" said he,

"I never died" said he.

Born :: Joel Emmanuel Hägglund on October 7, 1879(1879-10-07) or 1882 in Gävle, Sweden.

Died :: Joe Hill, November 19, 1915 (aged 36) Utah.

He was a labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also known as the Wobblies).

Joe Hill is immortalized by a poem written by Alfred Hayes in 1930. The song "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night" became an anthem of protest. Joan Baez's rendition of this track in Woodstock (in support of her draft resistant husband David Harris) was one the highlights of the first day (night, she took stage at about 1 am, Saturday morning)

Conscription (also known as "The Draft", the "Call-up" or "National service") is a general term for involuntary labor demanded by an established authority. It is most often used in the specific sense of government policies that require citizens to serve in the armed forces.

HAPPY MAY DAY!!! SOLIDARITY FOREVER!!!