Tellingly, however, the government also gave critical ground shortly after, passing a six-day work week into law. Designating himself France’s “ premier flic,” or top cop, then Interior Minister Georges Clemenceau stationed 60,000 gendarmes and troops in Paris in response, mostly suppressing the demonstrations by hundreds of summary arrests. Galvanized by a catastrophic mining accident in the Pas-de-Calais, which buried 1,200 miners in early 1906, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) - intent on winning an eight-hour workday - called for protest marches on May 1.
President Grover Cleveland shifted the federal holiday to the first Monday of September, defusing its revolutionary potential.īut ever since it began in France, le premier mai has served as a flash point for social and labor unrest. However - with greater foresight than his French contemporaries - then U.S. Ironically, French labor unions initially chose the date, May 1, to commemorate the American labor strikes and Haymarket massacre of May 1886.
0 kommentar(er)
