KARACHI: Like other parts of the world, Pakistan’s labour unions and workers communities throughout the country are all set to celebrate the International Labour Day by holding seminars, rallies and demonstration for achievement of their rights.
In Karachi, a big rally under the aegis of PILER comprising workers and farmers will be taken out from Mazar-e- Quaid to Karachi Press Club, where a demonstration will be held for achievements of the labour community rights. On this occasion, labour community leaders will deliver speeches and press the government to provide rights to the workers.
The workers’ unions in Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana and other big cities of Sindh will also take out rallies.
Other organisations like Pakistan Workers Federation, Pakistan Workers Confederation, Pakistan National Federation of Trade Unions and other unions have arranged programmes to observe the day with dignity in various parts of the country.
International Labour Day is a celebration of labourers and the working classes that is promoted by the international labour movements, socialists, communists or anarchists and occurs every year on May 1.
The 1904 International Socialist Conference in Amsterdam called on all social democratic party organisations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on May 1 for the legal establishment of the eight-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace.
The May 1 was chosen to be International Labour Day to commemorate the May 4, 1886, Haymarket affair in Chicago.
The police were trying to disperse a public assembly during a general strike for the eight-hour workday, when an unidentified person threw a bomb at the police. The police responded by firing on the workers, killing four demonstrators. The following day on May 5 in Milwaukee Wisconsin, the state militia fired on a crowd of strikers killing seven, including a schoolboy and a man feeding chickens in his yard.
In 1889, a meeting in Paris was held by the first congress of the Second International, following a proposal by Raymond Lavigne that called for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests.
May Day was formally recognised as an annual event at the International’s second congress in 1891.
