Today the world celebrates International Worker’s Day! On May 1, 1886, trade unionists in Chicago and in other parts of the United States took to the streets in the largest ever labor protest demanding an eight-hour day as a national standard. The Haymarket Affair in Chicago on May 4 marked this uprising of labor with tragic violence and inspired the international labor movement to commemorate May 1 as International Worker’s Day. Curiously, P
President Grover Cleveland chose not to commemorate the anniversary of the Haymarket Affair and instead declared the first Monday in September as Labor Day in the United States. However, more than 160 countries in the world officially celebrate International Worker’s Day or Labor Day on May 1 and many others do so informally. Mathew’s Parable of the Laborer’s in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1–16) reminds us of Jesus’ concern for “the least of these.”
Some scholars have pointed out that day laborers in the first century were hired when the tasks were so difficult and dangerous that a landowner would prefer to pay to have the task completed rather than risk harm to their enslaved workers and thus their “investment.” Laborers, then and now, have been abused, ignored, and denied protection and justice.
We are called upon to create just structures in our world that value all forms of labor and all kinds of laborers, especially those who live and work on the margins. And that’s regardless of whether you understand the purpose of Jesus’ parable as revealing the violation of sacred dignity of human laborers or making the point that however and whenever we come to our work in this world, we are deserving of compassion, justice and a living wage.
I grew up in a farming and factory town in southeast Michigan in the 1970s and 1980s when union membership was the norm for working class people. Good union jobs allowed our parents to buy homes, take vacations, send their kids to college, give to their community, and know that their rights and dignity were valued. My classmates and I were “first generation” college students who understood well that the opportunities available to us were in many ways a direct result of our parents’ good union jobs. This International Worker’s Day, the troubled landscape for workers the world over reminds us that in God’s world, justice for workers cannot be denied by national interests or arbitrary borders. The abuse of workers that is affirmed and perpetuated by unjust immigration laws reminds us of the great need for a truly international workers movement. Allowing corporations to be multinational and unconfined by national boundaries but punishing workers for moving to where the jobs are and being confined to humiliating working conditions and poverty due to lack of immigration status denies Jesus’ message of human worth and dignity.
On this International Worker’s Day, may we each and together, in small and significant ways, affirm the dignity and worth of workers throughout the world for the thriving of all creation.
