Workers plan downtown Durham rally for International Labor Day. What they’ll ask for

A May Day rally will bring together a broad swath of people fighting for better working conditions in Durham — including sanitation workers , public school employees , and union members from around the Triangle.

The Southern Workers Assembly has asked people to meet at 5 p.m. Wednesday in CCB Plaza. The group will march to Duke University.

The workers are calling for:

• $25 an hour for all.
• Affordable housing.
• Duke to pay the city and county a total of at least $20 million

  per year to make up for the

  local taxes lost to the university's tax-exempt status .
  
  
• A ceasefire in Gaza and divestment from Israel amid its ongoing war with Hamas.

What is May Day?

May 1 is celebrated globally as International Labor Day.

It traces its origins to the fight for an eight-hour workday which American labor unions declared should start May 1, 1886, according to the Industrial Workers of the World.

Mass walkouts began that day, prompting violence between police and anarchists in Chicago, the epicenter of the movement.

The eight-hour day and 40-hour week became standard in 1940, though many trades won victories earlier.

In the 1950s, as union membership reached its peak in the U.S. and fears of socialism grew, President Dwight D. Eisenhower countered by declaring May 1 as both Loyalty Day and Law Day .

Long before that, Americans began celebrating the worker later in the year. The federal government marked the first Monday in September as Labor Day in 1894.